Thanks to Claire for sharing this report of the Dawn Chorus walk. Ed
Arguably the biggest challenge of the Isle of Wight Walking Festival is not trekking 26 miles for Walk the Wight or doing the Action Challenge round the Island walk… it’s getting up in time for wildlife expert Ian Boyd from Arc’s Dawn Chorus Magic walk which starts at the unfeasibly early 4.30am.
It really is worth the effort however and every year, The Isle of Wight Walking Festival’s earliest walk draws a crowd of bleary but engaged early-risers who join Ian to learn more about the songbird symphony in the Bay’s wild hinterland along the Eastern Yar.
Starting before the first birdsong
Ian’s walk starts just before sunrise, before even the very first birds start to sing, so that walkers can hear each species as they come alive,
“The first birds to sense dawn and to get their singing out of the way are those with the biggest eyes, blackbirds and thrushes. Believe it or not, birdsong is about expelling excess energy.”
Informative and interesting
As well as learning more about how and why birds sing at dawn and dusk and how to identify them from their song, walkers heard about habitat management and the importance of protecting more than just nest sites.
“The territory in which birds’ nests are situated becomes their main food resource; it has to support a concentration of birds, adults and young, for a short space of time until after breeding, so that patch of surrounding landscape has an important job to do.
“People recognise the importance of protecting nest sites but can forget about this invisible space around each nest, that it’s a vital larder for breeding birds… an essential consideration in development in particular.”
A plethora of species
Almost 20 different species of birds made an appearance, in song at least, during this year’s walk, from many loud wrens, Cetti’s and reed warblers to chaffinches and chiffchaff and probably most exciting of all, blackcaps and the increasingly rare cuckoo.
One walker described the Dawn Chorus walk as a great micro-adventure, revealing a new facet to the Sandown he’s lived in for years while another visitor contacted Arc to say,
“Thank you for a wonderful dawn chorus walk… Very kind to get up so early on a Sunday morning and share with us knowledge of the songs of the bird world; delivered with clarity, wit, obvious passion for nature and much enthusiasm. Certainly a requirement to be heard above the belting volume of the local Wrens! Looking forward to attending more info walks and Arc events.”
