Tower and Town, June 2021 (view the full edition)Bird Sound In JuneHow does that old nursery rhyme go? "In May I sing all day, in June I change my tune......" The characteristic two-note call of the male cuckoo has been regularly heard since late April this year in locations along the Kennet valley and in the Cotswold Water Park, despite the national decline in numbers of this iconic summer visitor.  The call is a descending one, often registered as a minor third (D to B), sometimes (as in Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony) a major third (D to B flat on the clarinet) and there does seem to be some credence to the fact that the interval changes as the season progresses, from minor third towards a fourth. Less well-known is the call of the female, a rich and scary bubbling chuckle, a signal that she is looking for somewhere to lay her eggs: this serves to remind us that the cuckoo is a parasite, whose habits are less attractive than the male's beguiling notes. Of the summer visitors the quail is one of the latest to arrive, from its winter quarters in North Africa. Seldom seen, it betrays its presence with its curious triple-note "wet-me-lips" call, from a field of barley or winter wheat on warm June evenings. Quails are ventriloquists, for the song seems to come now from one part of the field, then another. And while the quail is bleating away on the Marlborough Downs many other birds have fallen silent. For species such as the blackcap the male needs to maintain silence while the browncap is sitting on eggs or rearing her young, before starting up again for a shorter period, in anticipation of a second brood. Many young birds are stretching their wings by this time and amongst other things learning to sing. A study carried out on a family of blue tits compared the adult's song with that of a junior apprentice. At normal speed they sounded identical, but when slowed down and raised to normal pitch it was obvious the young bird's pattern of notes was staccato and amateurish. Birdwatchers go out on June evenings to special locations, hoping to hear the strange "churring" of the nightjar or the weird "roding" calls of the woodcock. An even rarer species, the long-eared owl, can be detected by the sound of its young, begging for food with sharp squeaking whistles, reminiscent of a squeaky gate. Robin Nelson |