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It is easy to forget that birdsong is learned and not innate, so Graham has set us an interesting conundrum - less a quiz and more a guessing game. When you knock on a door, as has happened to me, and a voice says, 'Come in', on entering you expect to see a fellow human and not an Indian mynah. One needs to have seen the bird in a case like this to identify it.
However, the bird has to be innately capable of learning the song and reproducing it. One would not expect a carrion crow chick, for example, regardless of how many times it was exposed to the song of a wren, to be able to utter that particular sound - though it would be an intriguing phenomenon. Graham's bird sounds like a lesser whitethroat with an added trill so I would expect it to be closely related, probably another Sylvia warbler species.
My surmise is, thanks to Graham for the hint that it's not lesser whitethroat, that it is a bird reared by the female parent alone, so not exposed to the song of its male parent, that has become imprinted with the song of its nearest neighbour, a male lesser whitethroat, with the trill picked up from something like a wren and sharing its nesting habitat with those species. Recently I heard common whitethroat and lesser whitethroat singing within a very few metres of one another so my stab in the dark is common whitethroat, or failing that, Indian mynah!
I have listened to the Teign bird, which I believe has no resemblance to the Lincolnshire one. It is more musical, without any harsh notes, and I think may have been been picked up from a blackcap or similar. Without being seen its identity is anyone's guess.
Thanks, Graham, for the reminder that we can't always believe our ears either.
John
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