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Are Birds Losing Their Sense of Time?


-pops-
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I was woken this morning by the sound of birdsong. I thought it must be getting up time so I got out of bed and started to get dressed. Glancing at the clock as the side of the bed I noted it was just after midnight. Ah! clock must be slow. I carried on, booted up my machines and went down the stairs to put the kettle on. Still the blackbirds were singing away with a chaffinch in the background. The clocks downstairs were reading quarter past midnight so I then realised it was the bird clocks that were wrong, not mine.

It's not as though they are confused by street lighting or things like that - I live in the back of beyond and it is as quiet as the grave and just about as dark.

Anyway, what I did was set a few scans going on the computers and went back to bed. As I'd been "sensitised" to the birdsong, I was woken every few minutes by the noise which gradually increased until dawn. More of a midnight chorus than a dawn one.

Anyone experiencing this?

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We have had blackbirds chirping in the night for a couple of weeks now. I awoke this morning at 3.30 am and could hear them.

They seem to respond to red wine though - If I have a few glasses in the evening they stay silent.

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Odd that you should bring this up. pops, because management and I were commenting only yesterday about of "birdy goings-on".

We have had lapwings and also curlews around for a month now (but not as many as usual) and I heard a skylark about the same time.(not yet seen though). The Blackbirds that came and fed in the garden during thre winter (upto seven "pairs") have dwindled to just one occasional vistor. A pair of collared doves that nest in a cypressus about 12 yards from the back door have a pair of fully fledged young. They were about for a few days and then disappeared. There is a sparrow hawk locally that may have had a hand in the disapearance of some of the blackbirds and the doves.

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Odd that you should bring this up. pops, because management and I were commenting only yesterday about of "birdy goings-on".

We have had lapwings and also curlews around for a month now (but not as many as usual) and I heard a skylark about the same time.(not yet seen though). The Blackbirds that came and fed in the garden during thre winter (upto seven "pairs") have dwindled to just one occasional vistor. A pair of collared doves that nest in a cypressus about 12 yards from the back door have a pair of fully fledged young. They were about for a few days and then disappeared. There is a sparrow hawk locally that may have had a hand in the disapearance of some of the blackbirds and the doves.

I wish a Sparrow Hawk would kill off a few of the collared doves round here. They have the most irritating call of any other bird that I know of. :D

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The cold snap could have had something to do with catgates shrinkage, as before this we had lots of finches costing a fortune in bird seed and they nearly all disappeared. Is it on the very light nights that the birds are singing in the night

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