When I've done the Big Garden Birdwatch over the last few years I have often seen a blackcap in my Northamptonshire garden. I hardly ever see them in the normal course of events - they seem to be a bird that takes a bit of spotting.
And mostly we think of blackcaps as being summer visitors - they are warblers after all - that arrive in spring and whose songs light up the spring and summer days.
But over the last few decades blackcaps have become a lot commoner in winter - most of our wintering birds seem to be of German origin.
Here is a distribution map for blackcaps from last year's BGBW - a good spread of records but with a tendency for them to be seen towards the southwest of Britain rather than the northeast.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
I got a female a couple of weeks ago with which I was chuffed with as Warblers always give me a sense of Spring - even though this one was obviously over wintering.
By the way - there seem to be a few 'Nordic' Jackdaws about - another result of the Scandinavian invasion!