Wren has the art of noise

are, of course, harmful pests of farm crops.

Talking about the bright interiors of young bird’s mouths, I was once, on a June day, utterly amazed at the phenomenal drawing power of the inner mouth of a young cuckoo.

A starling, racing its way to its own nest full of youngsters, its beak full of wriggling insect life, was suddenly drawn as if by some invisible magnet, to divert to a young cuckoo stationed on a pipit’s nest.

The gape of this young cuckoo was apparently so colourful that the starling could not resist the urge to deposit that beak full of insects into its cavernous and glowingly colourful mouth!

Despite all this hectic activity, the air is nevertheless full of the vibrant music of June. The rich melody of a very tuneful blackbird competes with the gentler, less assertive almost whispering cadences of willow warblers, whilst chaffinches in every airt are chuntering away as only chaffinches can.

However, they are put to shame in terms of the number of notes uttered in a single tune, by a minuscule wren whose vocal offering is a volley of notes far too rapid to count and loud enough to almost drown out the voices of the other songsters.

I am assured that little wren is getting through no fewer than 56 notes in the space of 5.2 seconds every time he sings!

Experts tell us that the plainest, least obvious members of the avian community are the ones that sing the loudest.

Wrens, like many other inconspicuous birds, generally live in relatively thick vegetation.

In fact, wrens never seem to exhibit any high-flying ambitions. Thus they need to sing loudly in order to be more clearly heard.

The resonant booming of the elusive bittern, which lives most of its life hidden deep in reed beds, can be heard over a distance of more than a mile and similarly the wren’s rapidly delivered volley of notes is also designed to carry over considerable distances.

Not that the chaffinch is a slouch when it comes to issuing his message. I counted the regular offerings of the most vociferous of my resident chaffinches the other day.

He repeated his jaunty little song, which always ends with that splendid little flourish …. ‘we do!’ at the rate of seven times within a single minute!

If he were to keep that up throughout the hours of daylight … well just imagine! I bet he would end up with a sore throat!

Thankfully, chaffinches do pause between bouts of repetitive singing and rest their vocal chords.

It seems to me that the only bird to offer a real challenge to the rat-a-tattat song of jenny wren is the skylark.

It isn’t so much the speed of delivery or indeed the number of notes issued, for a cock wren may produce that volley of notes hundreds of times in a single day.

What amazes me is the sustainability of the lark’s song. In extreme cases, it can literally go on non-stop for as long as 20 minutes without a pause, albeit that such