Dawn Chorus warms the heart on a cold morning

By Mike Russell

Conservation Advisor

It’s 3.30am on the 1^st May, I’m up ready for another dawn chorus on a glorious Bank Holiday Morning deep in the heart of Sussex at Woods Mill. Firstly though I have to scrape the car free of frost to actually get to Woods Mill and I have to admit that the prospects for a glorious chorus at this point didn’t seem that promising; it was so blooming cold!

I needn’t have worried; arriving at Woods Mill I turned off the engine, opened the car door and the beautiful song of at least four nightingales drifted through the yet still dark but very clear night. By 4.15, 21 bleary-eyed souls were staggering out of their cars, many of them thinking that all this seemed like a good idea when they booked it, but now it was more like how an earth did they get talked into getting up at some ungodly hour on a cold, frosty May Bank Holiday morning to stand and listen to birds.

However, I started off by taking them down to listen to the nightingale, within about 40 metres and the clarity of their song just blew them away, many people never had heard one before. Backing vocals were provided by a cuckoo and then a particularly strident Cetti’s warbler, it’s rapid machine-gun like delivery surprised people from just a few metres away.

We then went into the wood, just as the first rays of light began to penetrate through the canopy. At first, individual robins were waking up and started to sing to re-assert their territorial status, followed by blackbirds. Gradually the depth of the chorus became obvious. Once you could hear through the nearby singers, a wall of sound emerged that encompassed the whole wood and beyond, a truly wonderful experience. Wrens added their loud urgent song, the loudness of it, completely at odds with their diminutive size and then, rather surprisingly, a nightingale began to sing from deep within the wood, a place where I haven’t heard one sing from before.

Emerging out of the wood into a beautiful sunny morning; the sun drawing up a mist from the lake but not yet strong enough to have any impact on the layer of frost enveloping the ground. Summer visitors such as chiffchaff, blackcap and whitethroat added their voices to the choir, but we could also now see them. Green woodpeckers yaffled, great spotted woodpeckers drummed, discordant crows cawed, woodpigeons cooed and two Canada geese flew out of the mist honking as they went, their honking at complete odds to the wonderful other sounds that surrounded us.

Eventually we got back to the Classroom, where cold hands clasped hot mugs of tea and coffee, and after a warming break I think everyone agreed that it was well wort getting up to enjoy a truly unforgettable experience on Mayday.