Final whistle for the noisy season
Spring’s dawn chorus with its joyous bird song has been hushed by the turn of the seasons.
Blackcaps and nightingales are no longer trying to charm mates, or proclaiming nesting territories with beautiful arias. Garden, willow, sedge and reed warblers have departed for the winter warmth of Africa, leaving our woods and wetlands eerily muted.
The drumming of woodpeckers and booming of bitterns are fast fading memories. And months will pass before blackbirds, along with mistle and song thrushes, take to the tree tops to croon.
Yet listen carefully, day or night, and birds are still making their presence known. Rather than the melodies of May, songbirds are relying on other vocal talents to help on epic migratory adventures.
Passerines – the proper name for songbirds that include thrushes, warblers, finches and larks – use short, sharp flight calls in order to maintain links with compatriots as they journey over land and sea.
Mid-October is the premium time to hear the thin, lisping whistles of redwings echoing in the darkness, with more than 700,000 of these diminutive thrushes entering our airspace after gruelling flights from Siberia.
If redwings are dominating the night sky with their voices, the daytime soundtrack is being played out by one of our more obscure but certainly noisy species.
What the dowdy meadow pipit lacks in size and showy colours is compensated with tweeting that would put social media addicts to shame. Its squeaky, high-pitched declarations are said to be what inspired the word “pipit”.
Although meadow pipits are common breeding birds on moors, downlands and saltmarshes, large numbers flock together in autumn on open grasslands, supplemented by arrivals from Iceland and Scandinavia.
Most of my weekly birdwatching accounts relate to days out with friends or walks with my spaniel. But the past few weeks I have enjoyed the incessant sounds of countless pipits doing their best to imitate referee whistles while watching my grandson Ben playing football.
Daytime soundtrack from one of our more obscure species