Instant Genius - The dawn chorus – why birds sing at the break of day

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

In springtime, as the Sun rises, the early morning air is filled with the glorious sound of birdsong. This is known as the dawn chorus. But why exactly are birds so vocal at this time of the day, what purpose does it serve, and how did their songs get so complex? In this episode, we’re joined by the RSPB’s Adrian Thomas, a bird expert and author of the RSPB Guide to Birdsong. He explains how this breathtaking morning symphony is motivated by mating rituals and territorial displays, tells us about the songs of some of his favourite avian vocal superstars, and gives us some top tips on how we can best experience this stunning natural phenomenon for ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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alongside French acoustic specialist focal, combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-size master class in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts

talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, the BBC Science Focus. In the springtime, as the sun rises, the early morning air is filled with a glorious sound of bird song. This is known as the dawn chorus. But why exactly are birds so vocal at this time of the day? What purpose does it serve? And how did their songs get so complex? In this episode, we're joined by the RSPB's Adrian Thomas,

a bird expert and author of the RSPB Guide to Bird Song. He explains how this breathtaking morning symphony is motivated by mating rituals and territorial displays. Tells us about the songs of some of his favourite avian vocal superstars and gives us some top tips and how we can play. best experience, this stunning natural phenomenon for ourselves. So, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

So today we're talking about the dawn chorus. So a lot of people will have heard of this. But first off, you know, what exactly do we mean by that? Yes. So the dawn chorus is that glorious outpouring of birdsong that most typically happens in spring. The first rays of light come up. over the horizon and birds, male birds in the UK, are prompted into an outpouring of their songs all at the same time it appears. So if you're out there, it can be quite overpowering because everything seems to sing at the same time. And of course, they're not doing an orchestral piece. They're all singing their own song at the same time. And by the time the sun comes up,

it's already starting to fade. The amount of song is decreasing. There's a little rest of Surgeons come evening, so you do get a mini dusk chorus, but no, it's a dawn that you really get all the birds in the area. I'll do a little bit of a disclaimer a little bit later on as to which birds exactly do the singer, but it feels like all the birds in the area are singing at dawn. So you mentioned there that this is a springtime phenomenon. So why is that? This is to do with what these songs are there to mean. They do actually have a meaning. It may not be human language that they're talking, but birds have got two very specific things

that they're trying to communicate when they sing. The first of those is that it's the breeding season and what they need to do is claim a territory. And that territory is important because within that there'll be the nest but there needs to also be enough food to provision that nest in order to pull off loads of chicks. And so what a male bird is doing in singing is he's saying, I've found this fabulous bit of habitat

and my song is my way of proclaiming that this patch is mine anybody else, probably best that you steer clear and the song will mean that we don't have to like come to blows over this. You've heard that I'm here, back off, this is mine. So that's an important element of it. And another important element is that female birds need to find a male to mate with and raise their young. So they're listening for a male who's found a good habitat,

but they're also listening through his song to find out whether he's going to be a suitable father. And typically, if a male has got a larger repertoire and sings more often and sings more proudly and enthusiastically, that is a really good signal. He's prime mating material. In different species, it varies as to which of those two things, territory or mate attraction is most important, but it's often a mix of the two. So it's basically the birds sort of showing off. Yeah, it is, I guess it's the dance hall, it's the nightclub, it's the male strutting around and but using sound.

And so many of the birds that do sing do so within a woodland environment where it's quite difficult if you're a female to find a male amongst all those leaves and branches and twigs. Sound is a brilliant way for a male to advertise that he is there both to the rivals and to his mate. So it occurs sort of first thing in the morning. You said, like sometimes they do a mini dusk chorus. But why is it especially sort of prominent and loud first thing in the morning? I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm not very good in the morning time. I'm always a bit groggy. Whereas I normally sing in the shower, so I'm there with the birds.

So it is a fascinating question. Is it, why should it be that they need to do it right at that point? And there are a couple of theories here, both of which I believe have some truth to them. The first is that most birds are diurnal. They're active during the day and they need to roost at night. Apart from the fact that many birds, particularly migratory birds, actually migrate by night. So by the time dawn comes, there is a chance that an intruder has landed overnight in the territory, spotted that it looks like a nice bit of habitat.

So it's really important for the resident male to immediately perk up into song and go, this is taken, by the way. I'm here. I'm alive. I've survived the night. So that's really important. The second reason is that most female birds are likely to lay their eggs first thing in the morning at dawn and immediately after will mate again with their mate.

So mating occurs repeatedly during the season. So it is the point in the day where a male bird is most likely to be, I think the word is co-coulded. I'm not very up with that kind of terminology, but a rival mate, this is the point where the female is most at risk of having a liaison with an incoming male. So both of those factors come into play. We have an added factor that may also be part of this in the early dawn. There isn't enough light for dioner birds to find prey. So what a great time to use the brilliant acoustics of the dawn to put your song out.

I think that all of those things are coming together and make sense for why every bird seems to strike up in song at that point. Yeah, so like coming off the back of that then, you mentioned earlier out different species of birds. You know, do all birds do it? Yeah, yes, as in no, they don't. So there is a group of birds which are called the songbirds. There's a more technical definition than that. They're typically the smaller birds and they actually evolved out of Australia and then spread across the globe. And song technically is intriguing because many birds have calls and those calls can

range from I'm frightened to I'm hungry and really simple messages and those calls are often quite short and quite simple. Song is often more complex and whereas the calls are innate within birds, song has to be learned. No bird, no songbird that emerges from its egg will have the song embedded in it already. So it has to listen to other birds around it, learn those songs, refine those songs and it's only this group of birds called the songbirds that have, that ability. Now there are some of the non-songbirds which make display calls which have the same function they're there to defend a territory and to find a mate, but those calls are innate within them. But the things that we typically think of as beautiful, lyrical, melodic songs, those are done

by the songbirds who will have learnt and practiced and refined those songs. So what are some of the sort of heroes of the dawn chorus then that we can listen to out for. And this is the beauty of it, isn't it? And that it's right outside almost all of our backdoors, front doors. Birds, many species of bird have made a home within our urban, suburban environments. And as long as you've got some trees and some greenery around you, it's very likely that you will hear some of the dawn chorus out there. Perhaps the most prevalent, and I think one of the most beautiful out there, is the black bird. And it's really interesting in terms of, I tend to define the little bursts of song that birds do as verses, and there are some birds which sing

the same verse repeatedly. Blackbird sings a different verse each time, which just adds to the melody and the surprise of what the blackbird is doing. And it also has a flutiness to it, which I think really appeals to the human ear. So very typically, a blackbird song verse is only about two to three seconds long. It's about four or five flutty notes and then a little high-pitched twiddle at the end. And that is very typical of a flow of Blackbird's song. A few flutty notes, twiddle at the end, pause, then sing again. And at dawn, that pause is really short. So you get this flow of verse after verse, which is, yeah, the Wren is another key component of the dawn chorus, but its song is rather higher and rather shriller. If you slow that song down and it's thought that

birds do hear sound, they hear the individual sounds in a way that we don't. It's as if the song has been slowed down. And when you slow down Wren's song, it is 140 notes or more in one verse of blackbird flutiness. That's probably what the female wren hears, but we hear something shriller with our ears. So I think the Wren sound is amazing, but it's the blackbird that probably really stands out to most people in the dawn chorus. So do they all sort of get going at the same time? different species do it at different times. You know, like when you go to see a band, maybe one's the support act and then one's the main act, they have their slots, etc. Or do they just all go for it at the same time?

So what tends to happen is that you do get a sequence. You get to a point where everybody is singing, but very typically the first bird in, so your opening act, I think, is a very fine opening act, is the Robin. It has larger eyes in relation to its body size than many other birds. So the thinking is it needs to get singing earlier because it's more active earlier and then needs to get on with feeding earlier. Another beautiful songster, again like the blackbird, every verse is different. And there's something to my ears which is rather watery about Robin's song. It has trickles and gurgles and bits that are rather, I imagine it like a mountain stream where you have still passages and then you get a gushing over the mountain stones in the

passage with little high sections, little low sections, and again, these little two to three second verses, pause and then sing something different. So talking about the content of the songs there, do they sing specific songs that are unique to the dawn chorus? Or is it just the same sort of song that they'll sing throughout the year? And this is where most birds will only sing in spring. It's actually determined by the increasing day length. Curiously, it's that increasing light and day length. It penetrates the bird's skull rather than going in through their eyes

and that puts in chain a load of hormonal chain reactions effectively which then lead to an enlargement of the part of the brain that's used for singing and that's just now in spring and by the time the end of the breeding season that part of the brain actually shrinks again and they've got less inclination to sing.

They will do a little bit of subsong in autumn where they practice and a species like Robin that has to maintain a territory all the way through the winter will continue to sing through the winter and its singing part of its brain remains large for that. But yeah, it means that it's only a spring element for most birds and once they refine their song, they'll sing that at dawn but the same songs throughout the day. And where I say Blackbird always changes it verses, it may have a repertoire of 30 verses. To our ears, it's very difficult to remember all 30. so it sounds like it's constantly changing.

But what you can do with a blackbird is that you can, if you've got the patience and you like sitting outside, you can whistle a little refrain to it. And if it likes it, it will incorporate it into its song. And once every 30 verses, you will hear your little addition to his repertoire being repeated. Something nice and simple like a few whistled notes, but make sure that you repeat them because he will need to learn them.

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Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So how exactly do birds make all these glorious songs then? I know it's fabulous, isn't it? When you think about how many sounds seem to come out of their mouth in such a gush. And it wasn't known for sure until only a few years ago exactly how they did it. We have a larynx. It's effectively a valve and air gets pushed through it and the valves kind of vibrate.

With the birds, it turns out that they have a version of the larynx, which is further down the windpipe after it has actually gone into a Y shape. So they have two larynxes. It's called the syrinx, which is from, I believe, the Greek for panpipe. And what it means is that birds can make two sounds simultaneously. And some of the recordings that I've made over the years, if you slow them down or listen really carefully, you can hear the two sounds at the same time being made.

And my favourite is the wee tier, which throws in lots of mimicry of lots of different birds. And at the same time, you can hear clicking noise going on. at the same time as sweet whistles are going on. That's the two sides of the syrinx in action at the same time. There are some birds that then augment that with air sacs to increase the volume. So the wood pigeon barely opens its mouth and a lot of the actions going on within its chest, within the air cavity within its chest. And then you get birds which use other parts of their body to do the sounds. So woodpecker's doing the drumming, that's to hold a territory and attract a mate. And then there's a fabulous wading bird called the snipe. Now it's not a sort of

a song, it's a display call, but what it does is it flies into the air, it then dives, it hurtles back down towards ground, and in doing so it splays its two outer tail feathers, which then twang as when you twang a ruler off the side of a desk, which creates this incredible humming sound, really loud. So it's fabulous. Most of it's done with the vocal chords within birds within this syringes, but they do employ other mechanisms as well. So another thing with the content of the songs. Do they differ region by region, you know, in the same way that say human accents do? They do, absolutely. Birds have dialects. So let me give you an example. The Chaffinch has a rather lazy song. It's called the Rain song. He has a normal song, which I think is like doing a

clog dance down the stairs with a big Tadar at the end of it. But if he's not feeling quite up to it, he does the rain song, which can be just the same note, repeated, over and over and over again. And If you go to a Scottish pine wood, the Chaffinch's rain call there, you'll hear it repeated and it might be a chew, chew, chew. But if you go somewhere in the south of England, you'll hear a quite different rain song to it. And yeah, if you go on holiday down to the med, the blackbirds there will be singing different songs with a different intonation than they're doing here. Curiously, some birds have populations that develop their own dialect between them, and then a female will go and actively choose a male with a different dialect, which is probably. an evolutionary adaptation to ensure mixing of the genetic pool, but some birds will love hearing their local dialect. And this thing, how birds are learning their birds on, we used to

think that what many birds did was subsong, where they practice, then that song crystallises, and then they're stuck with that song. We now think that song retains some plasticity all the way through their lives. And a female bird listening for the male with the greatest repertoire is probably picking out an elderly, elderly male, an older male who's proven himself to be a survivor and therefore probably a great father to the chicks. So you mentioned there the rain song. I mean, does weather have any effect on the songs at all? It does, yes. So most typically the dawn chorus will be at its best on a still, sunny morning. Doesn't necessarily need to be warm. Part of that is due to the acoustics. So dawn is,

brilliant for you say you don't get up too often. I'm going to urge you to get up and do the dawn course but also to hear how crystal clear the air can be on so many mornings and birds make full use of that and again at dusk you often get that that stillness that kicks in the wind drops at dusk and it's a brilliant point for them singing. In wet weather then the acoustics aren't so great and they've probably got a greater challenge to find food but we do have the stormcock in the UK, which is a kind of colloquial country name for the missile thrush. And very typically, the missile thresh will sing through a storm, will sing in advance of a storm, seems to love that effect. And I've yet to find a really good explanation of why the storm

cock so loves doing it at that time and in those weather conditions. Yeah, so you mentioned there, like how rainfall or something can influence the acoustics of an environment. But how about the actions of humans? You know, does that affect the way that the birds sing during the dawn chorus at all? Just our presence probably has very little effect in, in particular if you're in a habitat where birds are up in the trees and they know that we're a ground creature and we're, most of us are pretty poor at climbing trees. I certainly am. So it's fine in that respect. What we're finding, however, is that some human environments are pretty noisy. Roads in particular motorways, and birds are having to adapt their sounds to be better heard in motorway

environments and are probably more difficult for females to hear exactly what's going on. They're having to change their tonal range in it, and there is some simplification of song that's happening near to motorways, which when a female is listening for the greatest singers out there, it's a potential problem. Isolated to noisy environments, but yeah, potential problem. What can we learn, say, from studying it, sort of, you know, formally or academically? Can we sort of figure out the species, diversity or gauge the health of bird populations by, you know, perhaps making recordings and things like that? Yes, yes, absolutely. And this is a burgeoning area at the moment. So very typically, bird conservation has required great data to be found by people going out with their binoculars and recording what they see and they hear. And now with the advent of AI and machine learning, you can go and put speakers into environments and leave them running 24-7, 365 days a year, and then use AI. And you can see how this could be applied over many years' worth of data to find out whether the soundscape is altering over that time.

And hence, what species are there, what are not there? Are they decreasing in how prominent they are within that landscape? So we're seeing a real boom in the use of that kind of technology. So hopefully, like, people listening to this conversation will be thinking, you know, I want a bit of that. I want to go out and hear the dawn chorus. So what's some advice that you give to someone who's interested in doing that? How can they have the best experience? And the first advice, I would say, is do it.

And not only for the curiosity of hearing it, but for the mental health benefits of it, which are incredibly proven these days. Loads of research has gone into whether they're. This is actually good for us to listen to birdsong. Intriguingly, birdsong seems to activate the same parts of the brain that we listen to music on. It is nature's music and that's how we hear it. The fact that it is so free and available to all of us close to where we are, for some people there be a case of stepping out into the gardens, some into a local park, if you can get out, in particular into like a woodland environment,

that can be where the dawn chorus is strongest. but even if the prospect of getting up and the further we get into spring, the more that dawn chorus pushes towards 5 o'clock, 4.m. 4 a.m., if that doesn't appeal to you, the fact that birds then keep on singing through the day, albeit not at the same intensity, just pledging this year,

if you haven't yet done it, get out, switch off everything else that's going on in your brain, take off the earphones, and just tune into birdsong and revel in it, revel in the fact of what it's doing, revel in the fact that, in effect, I like to call it the natural soundtrack of our lives. So you don't have to go many generations back

to it being something that the vast majority of the human population would have heard because we'd have worked in the countryside. We'd have gauged the weather by it. We'd have gauged the season by it. We'd have gauge whether there are predators nearby, because when there are predators, the birds will stop singing,

they'll start doing alarm calls. So in the past, so many people, would have been attuned to bird's song, it would have meant so much to them. And it means a huge amount to me, as you can probably tell. And I gain so much from it. I gain a connection to nature from it. I gain that benefit of being in the moment.

And I think that connection is also that sense of, we're such a sound-oriented species, aren't we? We love to go to concerts and hear what's going on. And you only have to go out into nature. And I think with our music head turn on, you hear the prime soloists who are the divas of the bird world. You hear those who are perhaps in the background as the support singers. You hear the percussionists like the woodpeckers.

You hear the bass notes of the wood pigeons. And you can get totally engrossed with it and lose yourself in it. And I just find that a beautiful thing. So I understand that there are several events that go on related to the dawn chorus that people can get involved in. You know, what can you tell us about those? Since 1987, which was created by Chris Baines, the Great Wildlife Friendly Gardener, international dawn chorus has run every year.

It's on the first Sunday in May, so this year it's on the 3rd of May. It's celebrated all over the world, and there are various websites you can go to where you can hear it starting off in Australia and working its way across the globe. And on the RSBB website, you'll find lots of local events that you could go and attend where dawn chorus are being celebrated, sometimes on RSPB reserves, sometimes in parks and green spaces, and a chance to go and hear it in the company of experts and fellow enthusiasts. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius,

brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Adrian Thomas. If you liked while you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to stay our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel? at Science Focus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now.

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