Monday 24 January 2011

Blackbird singing in the dead of night...

Birdsong at night is a haunting sound, at once beautiful and cheering, and faintly disturbing, wrong. Round my way, the birds seem more and more to be singing in the dead of night. This last week or so it's been going on at all hours, from long after dark to long before dawn - has anyone else noticed a surge? By the sound of it, it's mostly robins, with the odd blackbird and the occasional wakeful sparrow. Why are they doing this? The latest thinking, based on some interesting research published in 2007, is that the birds (robins at least) are singing at night because it's too noisy during the day for them to make themselves heard. Anyone who's been near a robin in full belligerent song might find this hard to believe, but the research looks pretty solid, and noise seems a far more important factor than light pollution. Traffic noise in particular is no doubt on the increase in my area, as everywhere else - it's certainly enough on some local roads to make conversation at normal volume difficult - but lighting levels too seem to be rising all the time, and surely the spreading of a kind of artificial day into the the nighttime must be having some effect on the birds' metabolism and habits. Certainly it would be no bad thing - from every point of view - if there was less traffic on the roads and more lights were dimmed, or simply removed. There are odd reports of cash-strapped councils cutting back on street lighting, and this might help - but little prospect of any slowing in the relentless growth of motor traffic. Nocturnal birdsong - once so seldom heard that hearers would assume (nearly always wrongly) it was the nightingale - is likely to become an established feature of the urban soundscape. One can only hope all these sleepless night aren't turning the birds into groggy irritable wrecks and ruining their days.

6 comments:

  1. I've been noticing the same at about 3am. It's led me to think it's later than it is and consider getting up - until I notice the time. Given the theory you cite I wonder whether the building work on a big site nearby has driven their singing into the early hours.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, absolutely! Just in the last 2 or 3 weeks, I've noticed that the birds here in South London have started singing at about 00:30, and they're still going at 03:00. The first night I heard it, I thought it was just an anomoly, but it's been happening every night since then.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rather than a nightingale, it would more likely be a mockingbird. They'll position themselves right outside your window and do their Coltrane thing for hours when it's dark.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I noticed this as well. For the past two weeks or so, starting at 2 or 3AM the birds come out and chirp. My wife and I are new to the UK, so at first we just assumed that's what some species of bird did here. Very odd.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am fro London Ontario in CAnada
    and I can tell you that it is happening here as well, so Ow that we have established that it is probably Global I would suggest that it is DEFINITELY something to do with the magnetosphere being all wacky and wonky!! I have basically RULED OUT the noise and the light theories!
    Unless it is something even MOre ominous---perhaps to do with 2012?

    ReplyDelete
  6. hi, just found this and it has cheered me up. The same thing is happening here in West London. We have a blackbird singing pretty much all night long. It is 3 26 and he is going strong. I do remember hearing the blackbirds previously occasionally especially in the spring but i never remember this continuous singing between midnight and 3/4 am. And I also just don't remember this happening every night in Jan. Do the birds think that it is spring? It has been warm for dec/jan?

    ReplyDelete