FOR the past few weeks, we have been regally entertained by a mysterious visiting bird that sings each evening before dusk. Its platform is an ornamental maple in our neighbour’s garden. This decorative tree produces copious amounts of large deep red leaves reminiscent of sycamore foliage and they are big enough and thick enough to conceal the songster. Therein lay the problem. We could not catch sight of it even with binoculars, so we did not know the identity of our entertainer.

From the beginning we had no idea what species was singing so beautifully and I failed to identify the bird by its music alone. I can recognise many bird songs and calls, but this one presented a puzzle.

Its regular evening presence reminded me of a family holiday in Majorca when, each evening from eight o’clock until late, we were entertained by a nightingale. So regular was its timing that we referred to it as the eight o’-clock nightingale. We also had a nine o’clock donkey that passed our holiday cottage each morning, heading off to market.

As I write, our garden visitor is equally regular with his arrival except that he establishes himself earlier than our nightingale, generally singing from about five in the evening.

Now, the autumn darkness brings things to a halt but his music is loud, persistent and accomplished, delightful to listen to even if we have never seen the singer. He is extremely well concealed within a canopy of large protective leaves.

Determined to establish what kind of bird it was, we made various attempts at identification. It was quite simple to eliminate the obvious. Big birds like crows, rooks, buzzards, owls and others such as gulls, ducks and geese do not sing although they do have voices used for calling and to create alarm signals. We could discount those.

We knew it was not a thrush, blackbird or nightingale but some of its notes reminded me of a robin’s song. However, those were very few notes among many that were not in the least like those of a robin. I have seen linnets in and near our garden, but did not think it was one of them, and I do know that the dunnock, otherwise known as a hedge sparrow or hedge accentor, can produce a delightful song which some consider similar to that of a wren. Both live in our garden but are not the singer.

As our visitor sang throughout the summer months, I turned my attention to the variety of warblers that come from afar to this country to spend their summer with us. I could confidently state it was not a willow warbler, whose song sounds like one of those old sixpenny coins being spun on a dinner plate, and gradually winding down.

Its cousin, the chiff-chaff, calls its own name and both were regular visitors to our garden in summer. However, there are other warblers such as the blackcap, garden warbler and some rarer ones but most of those tend not to sing fluently but instead produce calls and alarm notes.

One clue is that our visitor is a small bird; on occasions in our efforts to identify him, we’ve spotted his silhouette darting among the foliage but it has always been too dark inside the tree, and he is too quick-moving to identify. I felt he was larger than the goldcrest which I spotted in the garden one day, and not a member of the titmouse family of whom we welcome many – great tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits, marsh tits and coal tits, not really noted for their songs.

We considered other small visitors like nuthatches, tree creepers, spotted fly-catchers or even various pipits, and it was definitely not a swallow, swift or house-martin. Nor was it a house-sparrow, now a rarity in our garden, while its cousins, the tree sparrows, do come to our garden to visit our bird feeders, but do not produce this kind of music. And I would not expect to hear a skylark singing from that tree – they prefer wide open spaces like moorland and large fields.

That process of elimination left us with the finch family, all fairly small birds. Probably most common in our garden are chaffinches and greenfinches; the song of the chaffinch is very recognisable and we’ve heard greenfinches in song sufficiently frequently to know that neither was our singer. The portly bullfinch is rarely heard singing its piping song and we welcome siskins from time to time. However, they do not sing like our entertainer and neither do redpolls, twites, hawfinches or crossbills.

The brambling is a winter visitor which can be mistaken for a chaffinch but he rarely sings during his visits, and in any case, our songster was in action before the expected arrival of the bramblings.

Probably the best known singer among the finches is the linnet which is present all year and which produces a light and attractive song. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, its delightful music caused it to be caught and caged to entertain visitors and residents in smart Victorian homes. Laws to protect birds and other wild creatures helped to stifle that trade and protect the species.

The yellowhammer’s cheerful “little bit of bread and no cheese” song is widely recognisable and so it was excluded from our list of possibles as were owls and small birds of prey. We could certainly omit the hoopoe which was seen in our village earlier this year, along with other later birds of passage during migration, ranging from skeins of geese to flocks of incoming waxwings, redwings and fieldfares.

However, there is one small bird that generally remains in this country throughout the year, although some do migrate to the continent whilst others from the North of England and the Lowlands of Scotland head towards our south coast or even across the Channel. It is considered widespread except on very high ground, it is extremely colourful and the male does produce a delightful loud song described as a liquid tinkling with trills and nasal notes but also as a pretty liquid twittering.

It is, of course, the goldfinch, one of our most colourful and distinctive birds, both the male and female having a bright red face bordered with black and white, while their plumage is a warm soft brown with yellow flashes on the wings. It also has a white tip to its black tail.

So delightful is its song that the goldfinch was also caught as a cage bird in Victorian times; records show that 132,000 were caught one year in Sussex alone in the 19th century, but now that it is protected, it is flourishing in this country.

Not surprisingly, a flock of goldfinches is known as a charm and I have seen flocks of them in our locality, nervous of our presence while moving from tree to tree with their bell-like tinkling calls. Today, they are free to live as nature intended where they continue to entertain us in our gardens and in the wild.