Tweet of the Day

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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Science & Nature

Discover birds through their songs and calls. 265 programmes of 90 seconds, over a year

Discover birds through their songs and calls. Each Tweet of the Day begins with a call or song, followed by a story of fascinating ornithology inspired by the sound.

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Tweet of the Day: The Vernal Jape

The Vernal Jape

BBC Radio 4 - Tweet of the Day, The Vernal Jape

Kate Humble presents the rare vernal jape.

Kate Humble presents the vernal jape, whose call is only heard in Britain on this one special day.

Today the call of the vernal jape is seldom heard in the British countryside as Kate Humble recounts for Tweet of the Day.  This now rare migrant was once thought frequent enough to be referenced by Shakespeare in Henry VII as the 'fair pollo on his nest of reeds'.  The vernal jape has never knowingly bred in Britain. But, during the mating season the male will discard its normally flamboyant plumage and adopt the most perfect camouflage:  with the most successful males being completely invisible to females.  In modern times this charismatic bird can occasionally be heard in the estuarine reed-beds of Hertfordshire and Northampton or less frequently the highlands of Essex.

Producer Bolondok Napja.

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