Tower and Town, June 2022 (view the full edition)“When birds do sing”Our songbirds have been chortling away since April, and with the arrival of more summer visitors singing even more vociferously in the merry month of May. Birds use song to attract mates, defend territories and warn of dangers, but in June things quieten down, and the contact calls of the adults and the sibilant twittering of youngsters take over. Why do they stop? Well, single and double-brooded species have little need to continue singing and birds begin moulting in the summer and need to avoid advertising their presence to predators.
The easiest are those whose name derives from their call: cuckoo, peewit and jackdaw for example, and the chiffchaff, who sometimes absent-mindedly misfires with “chaff-chiff”! What with “Tweet of the day” and an app called “Wablr”, which recognises and identifies a species when you play its song into your phone, there is plenty of help out there. “UK Birds Sounds” allows you to play a whole range of songs to aid recognition, even to stimulate a bird to sing by playing to it, but beware, for a bird hearing a recording of its song may believe its territory is being invaded. Someone once said to me “if you don’t recognise a call it’s probably a great tit.” At Marlborough I set out for College on my bike past an orchard. A great tit called with a mocking “tea-cher, tea-cher” and I thought…” well actually teaching is positive, interesting, rewarding…., so there!” I came back in the evening after a day of frustrations, difficult pupils and rain wetting my books. That damned great tit called again, but with a different strain: “told yuh, told yuh!”. Robin Nelson |
I’m often asked for tips in identifying song: some are easy to remember, such as the “little bit o’ bread and no cheese” of the yellowhammer, even if lazy birds sometimes forget the no cheese bit! The chaffinch song resembles a bowler running up to the crease and delivering a ball with a final flourish, and the tiny goldcrest with its thin, circling strain also concludes with a final twiddle. Then there’s the monotonous and mournful “U-ni-ted” of the collared dove (suitable for a team having a bad season) and the rather nicer “Be care-ful, Sylvie!” of the woodpigeon. The fairly similar looking thrushes are easily separated by sound: the song thrush is like a diligent chorister repeating its phrases: “bo-peep” x3, “shulair” x3 etc., while the mistle thrush has a mournful, drawling strain even during adverse weather, hence the nickname “stormcock”.