Pouring from its throat came this whirring

If you are old enough, do you remember your mother's or your grandmother's sewing machine?

I do: my mother kept her old Singer sewing machine which had been her mother's, until she was in late age.

She mended everything that the family tore or wore out from boiler suits to dusters and the daily sound of busy whirring was a comfort to our childish ears.

Pinafores for the girls, sailor suits for the boys among her five children were repaired as much as the collars were turned on the shirts of the men.

And all accompanied by the magical song of the Singer.

No wonder the grasshopper warbler was called by some the sewing machine bird.

Other parts of the country called it the reeler, the cricket-bird, and the grasshopper lark.

The picture shows this tiny warbler in full song and unusually showing itself to the outside world sitting out in the open. Normally these birds skulk under thick bramble bushes and you just do not see them.

But from about April 10 when they usually arrive on the Sussex coast from Africa, you certainly hear them for a few weeks.

The song is a continuous quiet mechanical humming or reeling.

It is like the song of the nightjar but ever so much softer.

I have known one to go on almost without a stop for five hours through the night. I know because I was sitting only a few yards from it on the downs near Cocking, and I just could not tear myself away.

It was a beautiful warm May night with a full moon, and the moonlight was shining directly on to the male bird as it sang.

It was sitting facing me and its beak was wide open and even in the pale moonlight its throat was a bright orange.

Pouring from its throat came this extraordinary whirring which went on and on and on.

Many other people have had the same experience.

Like the nightjar, it can go on singing as it breathes in, so it does not stop.

I used to be able to hear them a hundred yards away or more but having fired rifles in defence of the Realm my ears are not what they were so I have to be a bit closer.

Unfortunately grasshopper warblers are no longer as common as they were.

This may be due to problems in their overwintering grounds and that long and lengthening crossing of the Sahara.

Each year ringing groups catch and release about 50 each autumn at Beachy head and a few are heard in the dense jungles of rushes and brambles on parts of Amberley Wildbrooks, so a stroll near Waltham Brooks or similar may give you an evening sound like no other you have ever heard except in the old homestead of long ago.