Spring starts in the early morning in Lancashire with the dawn chorus. Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Alan Wright gets out of bed to immerse himself in birdsong.
Just before dawn, blackbirds get that feeling that it is going to be a lovely day, so they open up their beaks and start a symphony of song. This glorious bird has a huge range of notes, which they flute out with carefree abandon.
It’s all for a good reason, the song is to attract a mate and to ward off any rivals on its patch. The song is so wonderful that I cannot imagine any nearby love interest being able to resist.
I have often tried to whistle back at blackbirds, mimicking their song. It may cause some confusion for a second or two before the bird carries on with its song, ignoring the pesky humans.
I like to think that blackbird song is just a celebration of the daylight. Starting before dawn the harmony lifts you out of bed and makes you want to join the joyous party.
Another pre-dawn riser is the robin but you will have heard them singing all year. Robins find high perches in trees and bushes and let rip with a song that starts with slow and strong high notes, speeding up and descending in pitch.
This may sound wonderfully mellow to us humans but it’s a “Keep out!” cry to rival robins and other birds. A robin hopping onto the path as you walk through the countryside is demanding food and telling you not to enter its territory, but it does look really cute.
Wrens will be out around the same time and their song is similar to the robin but harsher and it can be really loud. I remember sitting in my garden a couple of years ago and a wren was belting out some stadium rock that actually hurt my ears.
The wren is one of our most common birds and you will see them dipping in an out of your garden walls, looking for insects hidden in the nooks and crannies.
I am lucky to live close to Brinscall Woods, between Chorley and Blackburn, and our early morning walks have a soundtrack of birds including the song thrush. This song pipes out in three repetitions, from trees and bushes. Then you might be lucky enough to see these lovely, spotted birds hopping into view.
The salmon-coloured chaffinch joins the chorus with its three-notes song, but it also has at least 10 other calls when it needs to communicate across parks and gardens. Similarly, the familiar “teacher, teacher, teacher” call of the great tit, is just one song from this clever bird. It is believed that the great tit’s wide vocabulary is a defensive tool, to confuse predators into thinking there are lots of birds instead of one.
As the morning rolls on and we all start to rise, finches, starlings and sparrows join the melee, it can be an amazing noise and can inspire pretty much anyone to start their day on a high.
At the Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Brockholes Nature Reserve, my colleague Tim Burrows came up with the idea of a causeway through the reedbed, close to the floating Visitor Village. If you wander through here first thing, it is like being at the front of rock concert, too close to the speakers.
Reed warblers and reed buntings really do turn up the volume to 11 as they greet the morning with song. They are joined by other birds and the songs are so beautiful that they send shivers down your spine. This is music at its purest and finest.
If you are out in the countryside, listen out for the cackle of pheasants, shouting out welcomes to mates. And spring is great for woodpeckers knocking and, in the evening, the “too wit” “too woo” of the tawny owl love in.
Just about this time of year, I can leave the house and hear the faint “cuckoo” of another iconic summer bird. A few years ago, I actually saw a cuckoo on a tree on the moors over Chorley. These are shy birds so this was a special moment.
The great thing about the dawn chorus is that you don’t have to get out of bed to hear it, just open your bedroom window, but when our tuneful birds are telling you it’s going to be a nice day, why would you stay in bed?
