circa.4300 BC to 2020 AD

 
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Wildlife Newsletter for the Township of Dalkey     
November / 2020 - Michael Ryan
FEBRUARY    MARCH    APRIL    MAY    JUNE    JULY    AUGUST     SEPTEMBER    OCTOBER     NOVEMBER    DECEMBER


  Around April and May the outpouring of birdsong was often commented on with people saying they had never been so conscious of it before while others said it seemed much more prevalent and actually louder than normal. Of course back then the birds were singing because those spring months are the optimum time for birdsong as the male bird is singing to attract or retain a mate and to let other male birds of his species know he owns the territory he was singing in.
   This year spring happened to have beautiful weather and the warm, still, quiet days helped amplify the bird song. And of course the lockdown made the whole world quieter for a while. Back then, when the sight and sound of a airplane became so uncommon and hearing a car at night might prompt speculation as to its purpose or destination, the world of man grew quiet and we could all hear the natural world much clearer.
  On Drivetime on RTÉ radio a few months back Niall Hatch from Birdwatch spoke about research that had recently been published concerning birdsong during the early months of the pandemic lockdown.
   The findings that Niall was speaking about concerned a study carried out in the USA of birdsong during those early lockdown months and they specifically concentrated on a particular bird the White Crowned Sparrow, a species we don’t get in Ireland. Scientists had been carrying out an ongoing long term study of the song of the male

 

white crowned sparrow for decades so they already had data at hand to see if and how the birds song had changed. Previously they’d found that city sparrows sang more loudly, but with a much more limited range, than their country cousins. And the shutdown presented an unprecedented opportunity for the researchers to see if those urban birds changed their tune. This year’s research found that the sparrows weren’t singing louder but were actually singing a more variable song at a lower frequency.   During normal times the bird would have to sing louder to make and would sacrifice quality for volume, but since it did not have to compete with traffic and other noise it was able to delivera richer sound.
The bandwidth of the trill at the end of the sparrows’ song is also key to communicating physical fitness to potential mates or rivals
  Researchers found previously that the urban birds limit their trills to higher frequencies so they don’t have to compete with the low hum of the traffic, but during the shutdown, the team found that the city sparrows utilized their full range – and when they compared the 2020 songs to historical recordings in the area, they found that some of the sparrows were singing in ways not heard in the city since the 1970s.
  Apparently other research has found that over the years some birds have altered the time of day that they sing to avoid the rush hour and subsequent louder background noise associated with it.

 
 

 
 Many years ago we bought a buddleia bush that produces orange flowers late in summer but, planted at the base of a silver birch and overshadowed by other shrubs and an oak tree it had barely produced a flower for years.
  I took a cutting which survived and during September and October when other buddleia had finished flowering it attracted many bees and butterflies including the Carder bumblebee, right, and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies, below.


 





  Robins are uncommon among song birds as they defend their territory through autumn and winter and of course singing is a important part of that defence to let other robins know who’s boss in that particular garden or area of woodland.
  The robin’s winter song is very subdued compared to their exuberant song in springtime, when they’ll be singing to impress a mate and to tell other male robins to keep away.
  The term wistful is sometimes used to describe robin song during the winter months. In my old Collins dictionary wistful is defined as ‘pensive; sadly contemplative; earnestly longing; thoughtful’ and indeed on a grey cold day in mid winter, sadly contemplative seems very appropriate to describe the robin’s tune when it has a wispy dutiful tone to it as opposed to his cheerful spring song but it’s song is always lovely to hear whatever the time of the year.
 




Song Thrushes do repeat phrases of song as Mr Browning so eloquently describe and apparently have a repertoire of over one hundred different phrases. Some of the song phrases are described as sounding like ‘Cherry Dew’ and ‘Knee Deep’.
They tend to end a burst of song with a single note repeated, usually four, but up to eight times.



   
  As far as I know nobody is quite sure why Song Thrushes frequently sing during the winter but they can often be heard from early November. Unlike robins they don’t seem to be guarding a territory as they’ll often have moved elsewhere by springtime.
One theory speculated is that the birds singing are juvenile males practicing their song in advance for the forthcoming breeding season. I’d be a bit sceptical about another suggestion that they might be guarding crops of berries.
  Years ago during winter when I used walk the dog over Killiney Hill before sunrise I’d be heartened to hear a song thrush singing through the darkness. Oddly enough, back then there were very few song thrushes nesting in the park and when we had Dawn Chorus outings on Killiney Hill they would be conspicuously absent. The one I used to hear on those dark mornings would be singing from a garden across the road from the entrance where the coffee shop is now. Thankfully in recent years they seem to be doing better and the woods ring out to the song thrushes song in spring.

Images & Text by :- Michael Ryan
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