It’s early March. Forty-five minutes before dawn, a red-legged partridge in the field behind my house begins to call. The coughing, ticking roll of notes like a stuttering diesel engine drifts through my open bedroom window and wakes me just enough for me to blink at my bedside clock and to recognise the sound as spring.
As the Northern Hemisphere moves closer to the sun, our days are increasingly filled with birdsong. Although some sing during winter (my local mistle thrush spent all January sending out curt, curlicued phrases through sleet and rain and fog) the lengthening days and rising temperatures fuel hormonal changes in other birds, spurring them to take voice. Spring and summer birdsong peaks at daybreak and then again at dusk, but the dawn chorus possesses the most intensity, richness and volume. This celebrated phenomenon peaks in late April and early May before dying away as birds turn their attentions to provisioning hungry young.
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