You've come from where?

I think (hope?) I'm safe to say that spring is finally here, and as I alluded to last month one thing is for certain - whatever the weather, birds are building nests and pairing up.

And while some of those birds have weathered winter with us, some are only now just landing on our shore.

And where have you come from?

What started out as a simple exercise to find out what bird travels the furthest to reach the UK, turned out to be somewhat less than straightforward.

And when I say less than straightforward, I mean that I pretty much fell at the first hurdle!

It turns out that we don't really know that much about where 'our' migrants spend winter, so my idea of 'guess the miles travelled by xxx' didn't get very far.

The good news is that projects are underway to build up our knowledge of where birds spend the winter, but not in a timely enough way to help me today!

Top of the migrant pops!

However, not to be deterred, I've still managed a countdown of sorts for which summer woodland bird travels the furthest to get here.

So, here's my run down.

In at number four is the blackcap:

Once these birds were definitely just a summer visitor, but every year we get more and more reports of these birds hanging around all year.

So, at their shortest journey, blackcaps don't actually go anywhere, with many birds preferring to spend their winter in the UK rather than heading off to Spain or Africa.

It's a bit of a tie for third between pied flycatchers:

and lesser whitethroats: 

who both end up in Africa, but on opposite shores - flycatchers to west Africa (around Ghana), and whitethroats to east Africa.

And flying straight into number one as one of the migrants flying the furthest to get to the UK, is:

The redstart. These beautiful rusty red and charcoal-coloured birds like to spend their winter in sub-Saharan Africa (around Uganda/Congo) before they turn up to raise a family in our woods.

I find it truly amazing that these birds (often weighing no more than a few smarties) make such incredible journeys.

Hopefully, with a few more years' worth of data we'll know a lot more about where the winter habitats of these birds are - meaning we can protect them not just here, but in their other 'homes' too.