START YOUR DAY RIGHT: THE JOY OF THE DAWN CHORUS
How Early Morning Birdsong Can Transform Your Mood and Mind
First light and the dawn chorus was in full swing, led by the fluty trills and perfect timing of a blackbird. A distant cuckoo chipped in by calling his name, ‘cuc-koo’. The ‘caw’ commotion of a nearby rookery provided an energetic backdrop, with the flock active and eager to get going with the day. After all, those rooks had eggs to hatch and chicks to feed.
May is such a wonderful time to get up and out before the sun rises. It’s when the countryside is most vibrant and birdsong is at its brightest. It’s effect on the listener can be special too. Hearing birdsong can boost mental health and wellbeing. Studies have shown that being close to nature improves mood and helps cope with stress. What better reason to up and out with nature?
And so it was that I got ready to go out like a man on a mission in the half-light, puzzling the heck out of rescue dog Bruce. Why was I reaching for his lead hours earlier than normal? No matter. The chance of an early walk was just too good to turn down.
We stepped out amongst the rising choir of birdsong as our own cockerels started to crow. I smiled at the irony. I was up and out before they could wake me up!
Residents and new arrivals
As the chorus picked up, a male roe deer got in on the act with a series of muffled barks. Chiffchaff and wren added to the throng, the latter’s body quivering as a huge sound out came out of such a tiny bird. A small but dapper warbler, a male whitethroat, scalded from a hawthorn bush. He refused to show at first, then threw himself maniacally into the air with jerky flight and even jerkier song. Hoping to attract a mate, he’d come up from Africa, crossing the Sahara, to put on this show.
The blackbird continued jubilant, triumphant, celebrating the new day. This was his time, his place. As his notes rang out, my heart lifted.
Best time of day
Sound seems clearer, crisper, more present at this time in the morning. As if the background hum of life has temporarily subsided. Which it has. Making it easier for early risers to get heard. Which is the whole point of the dawn chorus. To take advantage of the stillness before sunrise. To make your point at a time when it’s easier to be heard and safer to say it.
Silent Spring revisted?
Our attention was drawn to a whirring of wings along the edge of an adjacent field; red-legged partridges were flying low over newly ploughed furrows.
The fields were otherwise quiet. We don’t get many skylarks and other farmland songbirds anymore. Whilst the woodlands and hedgerows still reverberate to the sound of early morning songsters, fields can be remarkably quiet. Testimony to the decline in farmland wildlife due intensive farming.
The situation has echoes of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. Published as far back as 1962, this groundbreaking book played a pivotal role in raising awareness about the environmental impact of pesticides and sparked the modern environmental movement.
I remember visiting Carson’s childhood home in Pennsylvania, USA. I stared out of the very window she used as a little girl. The rural tranquillity of the Allegheny valley, Springdale was interrupted by two coal-fired chimney stacks, very much as it did during Carson’s formative years. Perhaps this is what helped her to spot the blurring of lines between industry and agriculture. The intensification of agriculture to the detriment of the welfare of animals both farmed and wild.
Although DDT and the devastating pesticides of Carson’s day have largely been phased out, their legacy and impact still linger.
Meanwhile, the industrialisation of the countryside has continued. Farmed animals have largely disappeared from fields to be caged and confined. Crops are doused in a new generation of chemicals that threaten beneficial insects like bees and contribute to farmland bird numbers ebbing away.
Heightened senses
Out on that early May morning searching for trees, Bruce and I wandered into our local wood feeling like latecomers to a theatre show. Oak, birch and sycamore were newly adorned with a fresh covering of leaves. They were alive to the sound of robin, wren, chaffinch, chiffchaff, woodpigeon, stock dove and blackcap. Bursting white with bundles of tightly packed petals, fragrant bushes looked draped in snow. The rich scent of hawthorn blossom smelt stranger stronger early morning.
As we listened, I gave Bruce a treat – a snack made of cultivated meat grown from stem cells. He tasted the future whilst I drank in the natural ambience of the present.
The day was now in full swing. Hares were chasing each other. Muntjac deer watched us walk by. A young fox spotted us then faded silently into a grassy bank.
To be honest, it wasn’t a classic dawn chorus. The sun decided not to get up. Like so many of us, preferring to stay tucked up under a blanket of cloud. If that light, that solar glow had only shown a bit, the songsters would have been bolder, louder, more present. But I was still glad I’d got up early. I’m a bit of a morning person anyway. That’s when I feel sharpest, most alive. It’s when I do my best work, which usually means spending those dawning hours glued to a laptop.
However, International Dawn Chorus Day was the perfect excuse to forget the laptop and get out in nature. I commend it to you.
Note: This is a version of an article first published in The Scotsman on Friday 16th May, 2025
Main Image: Male Reed Warbler | Credit: Philip Lymbery/CIWF
