<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/03/dawn-chorus-uk-birdsong-50-years-audio-landscape>
"Imagine a deafening abundance of birdsong so loud it wakes your children at
dawn; the chirrup of house sparrows, the chattering of starlings, the melody of
the wren, and the clear high-pitched flute of blackbirds saturating the garden,
reverberating around your local park, dominating your neighbourhood from early
morning to evening twilight.
So loud is the song of the thrush that the naturalist and ornithologist WH
Hudson wrote in 1919 that he was grateful when observing one that it was
perched on a tree at a distance from his home, “so that when I woke at half
past three or four o’clock, the shrill indefatigable voice came in at the open
window, softened by distance and washed by the dewy atmosphere to greater
purity”.
Poet Percy Shelley wrote of the skylark’s shrill delight, while John Keats’s
Ode to a Nightingale was inspired when he heard the full voice of the bird in
his garden. In 1832, the poet John Clare attempted to put the nightingale’s
song into words for the first time.
“Chee chew chew chew” and higher still
“Cheer cheer cheer cheer” more loud and shrill
“Cheer up cheer up cheer-up” and dropt
Low “tweet tweet tweet jug jug jug” and stopt.
It was the poet Mary Oliver who remarked how pausing to observe nature closely
is the first step to protecting and conserving it. “Attention is the beginning
of devotion,” she wrote.
But despite the obvious devotion of the most renowned literary voices of the
last two centuries, the “chee chew chee chew” of the nightingale, the
twittering of the house martin and the voice of the song thrush are heard no
more in gardens, yards and balconies across many parts of Britain.
In the last 50 years, Britain has lost an astonishing 73 million wild birds
from its landscape, according to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
“What we have is a shifting baseline,” said Dr Rob Robinson, a senior scientist
at the BTO who researches wild bird populations. “People engaging in nature
today are going to think the numbers they are seeing are normal, particularly
children. But if you go back 50 years, they would have been able to experience
a much richer environment.”
Recreated audio recording of the dawn chorus in Britain from the present day
back until the 1970s
As the symphony of birdsong known as the dawn chorus draws to its annual close
at the end of June, the
Guardian has recreated an audio landscape from across
the past 50 years to try to portray the variety and plentitude of birdsong we
have lost since tens of millions more birds were in full voice. The calls and
songs of a variety of species have been isolated to build an illustration of
the dawn chorus, representing a year in each decade, from now back to the
abundance of the 1970s."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
