This for me, is the iconic sound of the Russian spring, It's past midnight and a Thrush Nightingale sings outside our kitchen window.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ghxpsDalM
They are night migrants, males arrive first and then sing at night to attract any passing females. Unfortunately, this wonderful song is only given for a couple of weeks until they settle down to breed and then it's heard far less often and not at night.
A
Lovely. I envy you. When I lived in Wales I'd occasionally get Quail doing its similar thing about this time of year, but obviously not such a thrilling song.
Cheers
Hope you don't mind me adding to the Pied Flycatcher discussion. I help monitor Pied flycatchers in a local wood in Dumfries (bumper year, btw, over 300 pulli ringed and counting, highest number since the study started over 10 years ago)
Every year we find 1 or 2 dead males in nest boxes in spring. Killed by Great Tits for the rights to use the box. Dead with a smile on their faces as obviously the Great Tit can't remove the corpse and has to find another nest site.
An unusual amount of sickly birds around our feeder this year, mainly Greenfinches but a couple of Siskins and now a Bullfinch.
GS Woodpeckers are attending the feeder with young which scatters the other birds at the feeder when they arrive and we've had to net off the window to try and prevent fatal window strikes which have become unusually frequent.
A
Some friends of mine have also noted this, towards the Finnish / Swedish border in the north. Has been far cooler and wetter than expected and the birds are clinging to the feeders.
Great thread by the way with an amazing spectrum of birding beauty!
Black Woodpeckers are back from wherever it is they go to breed....
Arrived back in my flood forest this week too (breed in dry pine forest areas, probably not many kilometres away)