dunnocks

I grew up calling dunnocks hedge sparrows, and around this time I had noticed my first one solitarily picking through the dead leaves under the shadow of the roses or along the privet hedge.

A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009

The violets, lesser celandines and wood anemones were now part of a vivid growing line which drew in the singing dunnocks and yellowhammers, the butterflies and bees, the grass snake and the slugs and dewdrops too.

Country diary: Wenlock Edge 2011

In any case, it was easy to love the evidence in my hands: the emargination of the sixth primary of chiffchaffs, the blue-gray of the moulted greater coverts of first-year great tits, the reddish iris color of adult dunnocks, the fat keels of sedge warblers.

A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009

These three broods over my window were not the only ones in the place; there were at least twenty other pairs in the garden and outhouses of the inn -- sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds, dunnocks, wrens, starlings, and swallows.

A Shepherd's Life Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs 1881

A few more steps and I came upon as pretty a little scene in bird life as one could wish for: twenty to twenty-five small birds of different species -- tits, wrens, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches, yellowhammers -- were congregated on the lower outside twigs of a bramble bush and on the bare ground beside it close to the foot of the wall.

Afoot in England 1881

Cuckoos are brood parasites, pushing the eggs out of another bird's nest, particularly those of meadow pipits, dunnocks and reed warblers, and laying one of their own.

Home | Mail Online 2010

Help count up our feathered friends during the annual survey, with events to help you know your dunnocks from your house sparrows.

Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk 2010

Thus the birds brawled over their fare - first the tits and the finches, later the robins, the dunnocks and the sparrows, but then came the blackbirds and the thrushes, not able to extract food from the feeders, but able to pick up scraps on the ground below.

Belfasttelegraph.co.uk - Frontpage RSS Feed 2009

Then, with the sun, the dunnocks piped up and suddenly the sky was full of chattering jackdaws leaving the roost in the meadows.

getreading - Reading Post - RSS feed 2009

More than a century later, the myth of the dunnock's strict monogamy was shattered when Cambridge zoologist Nick Davies found that female dunnocks often went in for polyandry - mating with two or more males.

The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed 2008