Laura Albiac Vilas's Image

On a bright winter’s day Laura was birdwatching when she noticed this chiffchaff hunting.

Clinging to a stem, it darted out to grab passing mosquitoes, returning each time to its perch. ‘The bird was so small and moving so quickly it was difficult to focus,’ says Laura, but she persevered to capture this handsome portrait. Chiffchaffs need to eat around a third of their weight in insects daily and earn their name from their repetitive chiffchaff song. They winter in the Mediterranean, western and northern Africa, and are among the first songbirds to migrate back to the woodlands of northwest Europe each spring.