International Dawn Chorus Day takes place on the first Sunday of May each year and is a worldwide celebration of nature's greatest symphony.
This global event began in the UK in 1987 when wildlife enthusiast and local broadcaster Chris Baines decided to celebrate his birthday by inviting friends and family to listen to wildlife wake up with him at Moseley Bog in Birmingham. The event was promoted by the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust where Chris Baines was Vice-President and it grew in to a UK and global event.
From late December, the days get longer and lighter and the volume, intensity and diversity of bird song increases. By the end of April and the beginning of May, the dawn chorus reaches its peak as our summer visitors join our resident birds.
In my blog post on International Dawn Chorus Day last year, I said ….
International Dawn Chorus Day is particularly poignant this year given the terrible tragedy of the global health crisis. Many events for this special day are inevitably cancelled.
However, the world’s villages, towns and cities refuse to be silent despite widespread lockdowns of the human population. Rising like a tide of hope, from gardens, parks, woodlands and open spaces everywhere is a surge of sound: the individual songs of millions of birds coming together to create a very timely and welcome chorus.
There is something very special about doing something at the same time as lots of other people around the world with everyone focusing on the sounds of the natural world rather than all our current troubles and challenges.
Whatever happens in the coming weeks, the dawn chorus will be there tomorrow, and the next day and the next day.
In the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley in “To a Skylark” …. “The world should listen then, as I am listening now”.
Fortunately, a year on, at least in the UK, we are slowly emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I read this somewhere in recent days but I forgot to write down the source. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful description of the dawn chorus ….
"The woods are a battlefield, and not just between opposing males of the same species. The dawn chorus sounds like an orchestra, but it is really a sonic ecosystem where the competition to be heard has driven every species into its own special acoustic niche."
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