Lilting dawn chorus will soon be no more

● Sir — “That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, the Joni Mitchell song mused back in the 1970s. The line comes to mind when I contemplate how the birds have become a bit quieter in the mornings.

One of nature’s great gifts to us has been the dawn chorus, when the birds sing their little hearts out, not especially for our benefit, but we’re the ones who get to hear the great avian symphony as we open our eyes or windows in the morning or step outside into a new day.

How sad, then, to notice, and have it confirmed by birdwatchers, that nature’s choir has become depleted, with fewer of our feathered friends available these days to entertain.

So, although we still hear them, there’s less of the goldfinch’s quiet song, the bullfinch’s whistling note, the high-pitched song of the goldcrest or the greenfinch’s exuberant whistle.

The loud shrill of the wren and the blackbird’s soft tweeting are less audible too, and you wonder if the robin’s melancholy song has a deeper sadness to it for the times that are in it.

It seems climate change and habitat loss are putting a dampener on a daily melodic treat. Another factor is the prevalence of a certain kind of shooter, the one who likes to target songbirds. Over the years, I’ve seen the lead-peppered carcasses of birds in the fields, ditches and along roadsides. Little lives quelled for a cheap thrill.

Whether it’s climate change or gunshot that kills a singer, man is the culprit. Will we allow a cherished wonder of the natural world to become just a distant memory?

The demise of the dawn chorus would be, to quote another song, “the day the music died”. John Fitzgerald,

Callan, Co Kilkenny