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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Birds singing at night (1 Viewer)

Dixie

New member
Hi, I have just returned to the East of Scotland, and I am amazed at the amount of birdcall I hear just after midnight. I am fairly novice at birdying yet, but even I am fairly sure that one of them was a blackie. There is usually quite a racket going on. I am not in an area which seems subject to any more artificial light than any other, and wondered if this was a common phenomenon in this part of Britain. I used to live in the South of England, and birdnoise seemed to occur in the early hours of the morning, rather than in the middle of the night.

Does anyone have any ideas of why this is happening?

Dixie
 
In North America, the Northern Mockingbird is well-known for often singing in the middle of the night, in addition to daytime singing. The trigger is changing day length. They also sometimes perform midnight serenades during autumn, when day length again is rapidly changing.
 
Dixie said:
Hi, I have just returned to the East of Scotland, and I am amazed at the amount of birdcall I hear just after midnight. I am fairly novice at birdying yet, but even I am fairly sure that one of them was a blackie. There is usually quite a racket going on. I am not in an area which seems subject to any more artificial light than any other, and wondered if this was a common phenomenon in this part of Britain. I used to live in the South of England, and birdnoise seemed to occur in the early hours of the morning, rather than in the middle of the night.

Does anyone have any ideas of why this is happening?

Dixie

HI DIXIE,
Does this happen at any time of the month or round the time of the full moon , as here in suffolk from march to august i often hear birds singing at night on the estate round the time of the full moon if there is no cloud.
Regards derekjake.
 
I often hear Robins and Blackbirds singing in the middle of the night, our regular Blackbird out the back was singing last night at about half past midnight. The Jackdaws will also sometimes start calling at such an ungodly hour, but I'm presuming this is because they've been disturbed from their sleep in some way, as it's normally lots of them.
 
I've heard that blackbirds quite often sing at night, and I guess this is the time of year when they might choose to.

Just come back from a week in Scotland myself, and the blackbirds near us were certainly vociferous after dark.
 
My mum stays up half the night (I think she falls asleep in the chair) However, she often takes a look outside for a breath of air before going to bed, and frequently hears a robin singing in the tree at 2 or 3 am. She is in a semi-rural village, it's street lit, but not bright enough to be mistaken for dawn I would have thought.
 
Night Singing

Curtis Croulet said:
In North America, the Northern Mockingbird is well-known for often singing in the middle of the night, in addition to daytime singing. The trigger is changing day length. They also sometimes perform midnight serenades during autumn, when day length again is rapidly changing.

Yay! That's why I joined the forum - to find out who I heard singing to me all night long the other night. It sounded like a mockingbird, but I thought all of our songbirds went to sleep when it got dark. Thank you so much!
Jacquie
 
Round about now sedge warblers will sing through the night - one of their alternative names is Scotch Nightingale for just that reason.

Maybe they're setting off the blackbirds and whatnot?
 
blythkeith said:
Round about now sedge warblers will sing through the night - one of their alternative names is Scotch Nightingale for just that reason.

Maybe they're setting off the blackbirds and whatnot?

Do your nightingales go to the pub then? ;)

D
 
Oh, I heard a dunnock burst into a little burble of song around 10.30pm a few months ago, when it was pitch black and the dusk chorus was long over. It really surprised me. Then a couple of nights ago I was woken by what sounded like a crow on the roof. It was about 2am, I was very puzzled. I'm used to being woken by the screeching of tawny owl sometimes, but this didn't sound like that, it sound like croaky cawing. Woke me up but then I couldn't see the culprit making the noise so have no idea what it was- perhaps it could have been a crow after all.
 
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