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BLACKCAP
  Bird Call
| Characteristics: |
14 cm long and weighs approx. 18 g. Olive-tinged brownish back, ash grey underparts and sides of the face, whitish belly. The male has a neat black cap, extending to the eye. The female is slightly browner overall with a chestnut-brown cap. The Blackcap lives mostly in hiding and usually only attracts attention through his song, but in recent decades it has become a familiar winter visitor to suburban gardens in Britain.
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| Call: |
The contact call is a hard, deep tacc tacc, very similar to the call of some of its closest relatives. Its song is a rich warble which characteristically ends with a short series of flute-like notes, reminiscent of a Blackbird. |
| Habitat: |
The Blackcap is found in gardens and parks with bushes and trees, glades and woodlands with sufficient ground cover. It is a summer visitor to Central Europe between the middle of March and the end of October but in recent times the Central European population has started to winter in milder parts of western Europe instead of migrating to Africa.
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| Distribution: |
The species can be found across almost the whole of Europe and as far as Asia and parts of Northwest Africa.
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| Biology: |
Diet consists of insects and their larvae, spiders when available. In autumn and winter they switch to berries and fruit and may be attracted to bird tables by the provision of apples. The nest is built in thick vegetation close to the ground as well as in bushes. The blades used for building the nest are wrapped around the plants so that the nest is firmly anchored in the vegetation. 4 to 6 eggs with a whitish, grey or brown base and speckled with ash grey or dark brown. 1 brood a year; clutches from May.
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