Birds tuning up ahead of spring chorus
IN case you hadn’t heard, spring has arrived. You just need to listen out for it.
Our garden birds don’t check the calendar, but the lengthening days have stirred them into song ahead of the breeding season.
There’s no waiting until March and April, instead our avian songsters need to stake out territories and start attracting mates. As far as they are concerned, spring has already sprung.
And on sunny days it really is beginning to sound like it. Not a full on chorus, but threads of warbling and staccato chirps, like an orchestra tuning up before the main performance to come.
The robin stands out, with its wistful ditties. The variable sweet compositions are delivered in phrases with silent gaps between so it can listen out for neighbouring rivals. Robins are particularly territorial birds and while both sexes sing in the winter it is the males that take the fore in spring, and their songs become increasingly rich and melodic.
Good eyesight means they can be up and singing before sunrise and even after dark by the light of street lamps. One might hear several sounding off at each other, one song answered by another further off, a bit like duelling rappers.
The woodpigeons where I live on west Dartmoor are also cooing away. We have both the pigeons and collared doves visiting the garden, and it is the rhythm of their cooing that helps tell the two species apart.
The collared dove has a repetitive three-syllable coo, with the middle part longer in emphasis: coo-cooooocoo. Its intonation is sometimes compared to the football chant ‘Un-i-ted’.
The woodpigeon’s cooing is slightly more complicated, a tell-tale quick-slow-slow-quick-quick rhythm, that could be described as: ‘I-cooo-for-you-u’.
Another bird that can be heard singing already is the great tit, with its high-pitched, strident, see-sawing ditty, which sounds like it is saying: teacher, teacher, teacher. Homeschooling
for birdwatchers in lockdown!
Another that I am hearing quite a bit of is the mistle thrush. This thrush, more grey in tone than the slightly smaller song thrush, is not such an accomplished singer as its close relative, but does also repeat phrases. It is far less inventive, and delivers its songs loud and long from prominent perches, being particularly persistent – as if concerned no one heard it the first time, or second time, or third.
The rest of the avian chorus is also doing its vocal exercises. Soon the air will be filled with song. Now, when there is less of it, is a good time to enjoy learning one from the other.