The secretive garden bird which is often heard, but seldom seen

With the arrival of September, however, they reappear to resume their familiar daily routine. Prominent among them are a famous trio - the robin, the wren and the dunnock. If one of these birds appears, the others will not be far away.

They seem to enjoy each other's company and indeed there are times when the dowdy dunnock is mistaken for a wren, even if it does lack that very small stature and short, erect tail.

While most of our garden birds are well-known and easily identified, the quiet dunnock is surely the most inconspicuous of all. It goes about its secretive and unobtrusive life almost without any of us realising, and yet it is with us throughout the year and never far from human habitation.

While most of us are familiar with members of the tit family, the finches, swallows, swifts and house martins, blackbirds, thrushes and other garden visitors, we tend to overlook the dunnock.

This might be because it is not brightly coloured. Indeed, it is rather dull in appearance, having a warm brown back and wings, with a grey head and underparts.

It is about the size of a robin but larger than a wren, although the brown colouring of the dunnock is very similar to that of both the robin and the wren. It seldom obtains food from bushes and trees, but almost always hunts it on the ground. It favours small insects, worms and larvae, which it eats during the summer, but it will turn to seeds and grain in the winter.

When we place seeds in our bird feeders during the winter, the dunnock will not attempt to copy the acrobatics of the blue tits or finches, but will cheerfully wait underneath for titbits to fall to the ground.

It has a peculiar type of hopping action which some observers describe as a shuffle and sometimes it will move sideways as it forages beneath the shrubs or border flowers.

There are times I have heard a dunnock hunting food among fallen leaves, yet I've been unable to see the bird, so effective is its camouflage. Even on open ground, it is sometimes difficult to see.

For all its quietness and secretive lifestyle, the dunnock has several names. For many years it was known as the hedge accentor because it belongs to the accentor family of birds, many of whom live in mountainous regions. Some of my older reference books refer to it under this name, but most modern books name it the dunnock, a name which reflects its warm brown colour. Yet other books call it the hedge sparrow, although it is not related to the sparrow family. I think this comes from a medieval habit of referring to any small bird as a sparrow.

The dunnock also has other names. Some country people would call it Dick Dunnock, while others referred to it as the shuffle-wing due to its frequent habit of dropping and fluttering its wings while hunting food on the ground.

Hereabouts, most people still refer to it as a hedge sparrow and, in spite of our modern reference books, it seems few of us use its more modern name of dunnock.

Quite surprisingly, it has a very pleasant song which some liken to that of a wren, albeit without the piercing loudness or aggressiveness of the wren's music. The dunnock sings very frequently, often at night, but, just as its physical appearance makes it almost invisible, so its pleasant little song is often lost in the louder music of others, like the wren, blackbird and thrush. But it does produce a very piercing and regularly repeated high-pitched squeak, which is often the only hint of its presence.

This is one of the little birds of whom the female cuckoo takes advantage. She will lay one egg in a dunnock's nest, which is usually constructed in a bush a few feet off the ground, and the unfortunate pair of dunnocks then have the task of rearing the huge cuckoo chick as if it was their own. They do not appear to resent this, even if it means the death of one of their own brood. Juvenile dunnocks, by the way, look extremely like young robins in their speckled brown plumage.

Despite its anonymity, the hedge sparrow features in some weather lore, though I don't think it is from England. The bird is plentiful on the continent and I think the lore comes from overseas. It says: "If the hedge sparrow is heard before the grapevine is putting forth its buds, it is said a good crop is in store."

A walk along the escarpment to the north of Sutton Bank, that wonderful vantage point on the A170 Thirsk to Scarborough route, reminded me of the Drovers' Road which once came this way. Perhaps the name is slightly misleading because this famous old highway existed long before the drovers made such good use of it, but they brought it into prominence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Sometimes called the Hambleton Road, it was probably part of an ancient route from Scotland to London and is known to have existed long before the Great North Road sliced its way through Yorkshire. Its precise age is unknown, but experts believe it is prehistoric. Evidence of Bronze Age man has been found close to the route and an Iron Age fort was discovered near Boltby. Earthworks and dykes have also been found and it is fairly certain the Romans used it. They did not pave it as they did at Wheeldale and elsewhere, but evidence of their presence has been unearthed at both the northern and southern parts of the road.

It is fairly certain that the Saxons and Norsemen came this way and there exists a local legend that William the Conqueror and his army followed this route during the Harrying of the North. He marched from Teesside to York in terrible weather and is said to have got lost in the Hawnby area of Bilsdale. Local folklore says that the loud curses of his soldiers as they tried to find their correct way in a terrible snowstorm led to the saying "cussing like Billy Norman."

It is also fairly certain that St Cuthbert's body was brought to Crayke via this route and another user was probably Edward II, who fled when his army was defeated at Scots Corner above Oldstead near Sutton Bank Top in 1322.

Foot passengers and horse traffic used the route when they were trading with the local monasteries and abbeys, and it even survived the sixteenth century when landowners were duty bound to maintain the roads which ran within their parishes.

As stage coaches turned eventually to the new turnpike routes, the track over Hambleton fell into disuse, but later found a new role as a drovers' road. Pigs, sheep, turkeys, geese and cattle were all driven this way, often to avoid the cost of the turnpikes. Hundreds of thousands of cattle were driven over those moors, all on foot, and sometimes the strings of cattle were more than two miles long. Inns were established to cater for the drovers, and wayside craftsmen earned a good living shoeing the drovers' horses or even treating animals when they were ill.

Parts of that road still exist as unsurfaced tracks, but much of it is now surfaced. It entered the North York Moors near Swainby and ran almost due south, passing along the heights of Black Hambleton near Sutton Bank Top, where it forked. One track descended into Ryedale near Oldstead and went on to York via Coxwold, while the other followed what is now the A170 to Tom Smith's Cross on Wass Moor, where it bore right towards Ampleforth Beacon, and then through Stonegrave and Hovingham to Malton's markets.

There is a huge amount of history, drama and legend along that lofty road and some unsurfaced portions currently serve as the Cleveland Way long-distance footpath. One must inevitably speculate about the stories those old stones could tell, like drovers' dogs which were dismissed at Malton to find their own way back to Scotland. And so they did, being fed along the way by friendly innkeepers.