Grasshopper warbler king of songbirds

MAY 6 was International Dawn Chorus Day. People struggled out of bed at cockcrow to hear the birds.

The session I attended was exhilarating; about 20 species sang or called.

On a cool still morning the chorus was especially loud, a reminder of the enormous energy birds put into singing and the extraordinary power of their songs. If a wren were scaled up to the size of an aircraft and its song amplified accordingly, the sound would be as deafening to our ears as that of the plane’s engines.