11 hours ago
Mornings are quieter now but the real stars are here
T he dawn chorus is now less rich, less showy — daytime birdsong is subdued and lacks the vigour of spring, but there are songsters still. In our garden there are melodious blackbirds and wood pigeons cooing calmly throughout the day. But the stars of the midsummer garden are a handful of song thrushes, whose calls remain as confident and tuneful as they have been all spring.
These birds start early in winter, sing long days all spring and still perform into July. The song thrush is one of the loudest songsters for its size and the most interesting: each of our garden birds has a repertoire of repeated calls, sometimes simple phrases and sometimes more complex, often a mimic of a curlew or starling. My Merlin bird app still gets thrown by these inventive and energetic songbirds, misidentifying my garden thrushes as American warblers, Indian jungle birds or continental European songsters.
