This small brown bird with light breast and thin bill lives in marshes and can be seen hopping in and amongst the reeds. The scientific name (Certhia palustris) translates to leaping through marshy shrubs! Because they like to hide away in the grasses of the marsh, they can be hard to see, but if you’re lucky, at dawn or dusk the males will come out to the top of the reeds to sing. A cool fact about these warbler-sized birds is that they are surprisingly fierce and will pierce the eggs of other birds in the area and even kill nestlings of birds that are competing for space! The males make several ‘dummy’ nests while the female constructs a separate nest where the young are actually raised.
