It’s not my soundscape of choice, but it’s what we have. Rumble of bus. Clatter of drill. The background hum of south London traffic. Such is the lot of the urban birder. But walk two minutes, from high street to cemetery, and the background din is replaced by a more welcome sound: the agitated muttering of a hundred birds.
Most of them are starlings, chatting a load of who-knows-what, their jabbering punctuated by clicks, buzzes and whistles, excitable as pre-assembly schoolchildren. There are redwings, too, gathered in a nearby tree, their pre-migration babble more subdued. Parallel gangs – not enemies, but not fraternising either. The redwings will leave soon, slipping away without warning – so rude – and then we will know winter is done. Not before time.
Spring is just round the perpetual corner, despite what the thermometer might say. You can see it in the budding magnolias, the impressionistic spray of blackthorn blossom, the sketchy softening of tree outlines.
And you can hear it in the voices of the birds: the “tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada tsee bada scabba diddle oo” of a goldcrest, the indeterminate jangle of a dunnock, the insistent two-note chirrup of a great tit. Each week there is more, each new bird adding a layer of complexity. Soon the air will be thick with it.
I’m never sure about the term “dawn chorus”. A chorus sings together, united in purpose. Birds are individuals that happen to be singing at the same time, each one pursuing its own agenda in a way that would see it kicked out of any self-respecting choir. Here I am. Me. Me. Me.
But it does something to us. Stop and listen, allowing every tsip, stroop and chiddlywit to penetrate the ear. It gives you life.
Perhaps it’s nothing more complicated than hearing a living thing communicating. Perhaps it speaks to something primitive, the sonic backdrop to the lives of our ancestors, their ancestors, their ancestors before them. Or perhaps it’s just the raw energy of it – a music we can neither understand or recreate, but which feeds the soul in mysterious ways.
I head home. A wren shouts at me as I leave, and for a few seconds I barely hear the buses and the drills.
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