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Living World

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The Living World

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Intimate encounters and extraordinary observations of wild nature in Britain and beyond.

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Living World: Dawn Chorus Day

05/05/2013

Dawn Chorus Day

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, Dawn Chorus Day

Trai Anfield revels in a sound spectacle on International Dawn Chorus Day.

To celebrate International Dawn Chorus Day, Trai Anfield visits Coombes Valley in Staffordshire to experience the sound spectacle that is a dawn chorus in oak woodland.

May 5th is International Dawn Chorus day and to celebrate this worldwide event presenter Trai Anfield heads to the Coombes Valley near Leek in Staffordshire to experience the emulsion of sound of a dawn chorus there.

Well before dawn, for this special Living World, Trai Anfield meets up with Jarrod Sneyd from the RSPB. Here standing in oak woodland their sense of anticipation rises as with the first shimmers of light breaking the eastern horizon, the first pipings of the thrush family begin to break the silence. Slowly and imperceptibly more birds and different species join the awakening woods, the warblers, flycatchers and redstarts are then followed by the seed eaters until, soon after sunrise, the wood is alive with nature's choral sound. Can there be any better way to celebrate the arrival of spring.

During the morning Trai discovers what birds are actually doing at dawn and why this is a special time of year. She also discovers that there is a dusk chorus, no less spectacular, but with increased ambient sounds in the evening, this is an event that is often overlooked. Sadly and all too soon, the dawn chorus in this little corner of England begins to wane and the countryside reverts to background ambient sound as those songsters head off to forage in the woods. Likewise Trai packs up her microphone and heads off for a breakfast with the memory of that sound still fresh in her memory.

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