Soaring symphony that’s worth getting up at 3am for
And there’s no better time to enjoy the dawn chorus than this month
THERE’S a secret country hidden in the heart of our own. It exists for a few short weeks of every year. You can get there as easily as entering Narnia through the back of the wardrobe, but few people manage it. There’s always a good reason for not setting your alarm clock for 3.30am or earlier.
The name of that country is Dawn. The dawn chorus in high spring is perhaps the greatest wild wonder our crowded island can offer: the time when the birds awake from their brief slumbers and fill the cold air with songs of love and hate, sex, territory and the meaning of life.
Tomorrow is International Dawn Chorus Day, a celebration of the annual miracle. This has been recognised with an issue of lovely stamps from the Royal Mail, which show ten of our finest singers. So the next time you pick up the post in the morning, you can gaze at images of the birds that have been in full voice for hours already . . . and maybe you will resolve to get up for that elusive dawn chorus soon.
I had the immense pleasure of being involved with the birdsong stamps. In fact, I had the gorgeously difficult job of choosing the songsters (and sorry if I left out your favourite).
Still, I’ve included the two great staples of the poets: skylark and nightingale. I also chose the song thrush, singing the spring in across suburban gardens and urban parks.
The willow warbler was a must: a bird whose song seems especially lovely to me: a sweet lisping descent down the scale. Every year I hear that song announce the arrival of the high spring in this country — and a few times I’ve heard it announce the longed-for rains in southern Africa. Everywhere it goes, this bird is a joy-bringer.
It’s right that we’re celebrating this annual miracle, and it’s the greatest privilege to have been a part of the stamps thing. I’ve even awarded myself the OBE (Ornithology Beats Everything).
The dawn chorus is our most accessible wild adventure.
YOU can travel to Mull and look for eagles, you can go to Wales and find dolphins, you can take a boat in Northumberland and seek puffins; but the dawn chorus takes place in your own back garden and in the local park: across railways lines, alongside motorways, anywhere there’s a touch of green. For me it’s an annual pilgrimage. The alarm is the first song I hear: God, I must be mad. I force myself up, a triumph of the will, and dress for a cold winter day. Make a flask of tea. Walk out as the black sky shows the first of 50 shades of grey. Find a favourite seat and impossible — impossible but true — the first voice is already striking up. One by one the chorus swells till it’s a mighty sound . . .
An hour or so later I go back to bed rejoicing. And it’s good for you. Birdsong, that is.
The National Trust commissioned research into the subject and Dr Eleanor Ratcliffe showed that birdsong has a real meaning for humans. It helps us to recover from stress and it helps to restore tired minds. Birdsong makes us happier; birdsong makes us more effective human beings.
Birdsong reaches its peak in May. By this time, the migrants from Africa and southern Europe are all back here.
The male songbirds seek the best possible place for raising a nestful of birds and the best possible female to share it with, they defend both against other birds of the same species — and they do it all by means of song.
Sometimes it’s as simple as the song of the willow warbler. Sometimes it’s as complicated as the nightingale, which has a repertoire of 250 different phrases and 600 separate sound units.
The sedge warbler is a small brown bird that wouldn’t stop most people for a second — until it sang. Its song is so complex that it’s said the bird never sings the same song twice.
The despair of the knight-atarms in a poem by Keats — ‘alone and palely loitering’ — is brought home by the most desolate line of all: ‘And no birds sing.’
This haunted the imagination of U.S. marine biologist Rachel Carson, who wanted to use it as a chapter title in her book. But she was outvoted. Not just a chapter, the whole book was called Silent Spring, and when it was published in 1962 it marked the start of the environment movement.
The idea of spring without birdsong caused a wave of horror. Many of the harmful chemicals listed in the book are now banned. We’re wiser now, much wiser . . . and yet we are still losing birdsong. Every spring is a little quieter than the last.
When did you last hear a cuckoo? I heard them on Streatham Common in South London when I was a boy; these days most people get through the year without hearing a single one.
The skylark population halved during the Nineties — mostly because of ever-more intense farming — and it’s still declining.
Many people remember the mnemonic for the song of the yellowhammer: ‘A little bit of bread and no cheeeeese.’
Partly for that reason, the bird made it to a stamp: the male shown there is tremendously handsome with his bright yellow head — and, alas, another example of a declining farmland bird.
But we’re also losing the ability to hear birdsong. Example: a glorious spring morning in the Norfolk countryside. Birdsong was cacophonous: a whitethroat and a lesser whitethroat were having a loudness competition. A jogger thundered past me . . . wearing earphones. Like going to the Sistine Chapel blindfolded.
Even without earphones, we shut things out. Most of modern life would be impossible if we didn’t. Traffic, trains, planes, construction, piped music — our brains cleverly shut down our awareness of such intrusive sounds. The price is the birdsong we lose as well.
CELEBRATING International Dawn Chorus Day is an attempt to claim back what we have lost: for the sake of the birds, for the sake of our own stressed and difficult lives.
In this country there are events organised by many organisations, including the Wildlife Trusts, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust. Internationally, there are events across the world.
Radio 4 is marking the occasion with an all-night broadcast taking in all of Europe, tracking the rising sun from Moscow to Dublin and listening to the birdsong that welcomes it every step of the way, in a programme that starts at half-past midnight on Sunday morning and goes on till seven.
It’s my belief that wildlife conservation starts with wonder. It starts with an experience of nature that fills you with joy — and also with the realisation that the wild world really matters on all kinds of levels. After that, you want to do something about it: so you join the swelling chorus of voices that speak up for our wild heritage.
Probably the best and certainly the easiest way to find that experience of joy and wonder is birdsong — and the best time to find it is right now. Try. This very second. Open a window, switch off the television or the radio, and listen.
Two syllables, strident, loud, rhythmic. Some say it sounds like a squeaky pump, others prefer ‘teacher-teacher-teacher’. Got it? You’ve just identified a great tit without seeing it.
A jumble of rapid notes followed by a loud, defiant trill. Now you’ve added wren to your list. A sweet whistling, like a man with hands in his pockets. That’s blackbird.
Or make a plan that sometime in the course of your busy day, you will take a pause and listen. You can save it as an evening treat. Take a nice drink outside. And listen. The blackbird on the chimney pots is bringing you the greatest sermon on conservation you will ever hear in your life.
Birdsong makes the world richer. Birdsong helps us in our own lives, as the research shows.
And at dawn, this very week, it’s at its very best. It’s out there, it’s free and it’s all yours. All you have to do is reach out.