I love to witness the daily phenomenon called the "dawn chorus". Strangely, it's not really just at dawn, and it's not a chorus. "Pre-dawn multi-species polyphony" might be a better description!
About an hour before the sun comes up, the birds start waking up and starting their day; preening, looking around for breakfast, and calling to establish territories and locate the members of their family. I guess it's the equivalent of people wandering around the house, putting coffee on, preparing some muesli and yoghurt, and saying good morning to each other.
This morning the sun rose at 5:22am, but the birds had been up and calling since at least 4:45am. I was wandering around on the edge of a Bush Forever Site around 5am. It was too dark to see the birds, so I had to rely on identifying their calls.
Here are some of the birds I heard in the "dawn chorus", and a rough description of the sounds they make:
- Western Wattlebirds - rolling chuckles
- New Holland Honeyeaters - chirpy tweety noises; contact calls to other family members
- Brown Honeyeaters - soft clicks, hoarse rasps and a sweet ringing song
- Australian Ringnecks ("Twenty-eights") - "da-da ding ding ding" like a doorbell
- Red-capped Parrot - high-pitched whistly squeaks
- Rufous Whistler - ringing "eeee- chong" and ringing song
- Splendid Fairy-wrens - high-pitched descending metallic reel "twisty twisty twisty twisty"
- Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike - rusty weedly creaks
- Laughing Kookaburra (note that this bird is not native to WA) - maniacal cackling
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