The unmistakable profile of a Common Hoopoe. I love these birds, with their distinctive thin bill and counterbalancing crest. I think they have evolved just to delight me! (Mind you, I could say that about most critters)

Thick-billed Flowerpecker (trying to make itself more colorful by surrounding itself with flowers). Somehow gratifying to see this little bird feeding on mistletoe, which is a common parasite on eucalypts in Australia. The light was very harsh at midday, so I was lucky to get it in the shade.

Oriental Magpie Robin, every Indian garden has one (or two). Taken in the garden outside our hotel this morning in soft morning light.

Gulp! Indian Grey Hornbill feasting on figs. These big birds have are usually very flighty, and difficult to get close to. You just have to catch one when it is distracted, and what better way than with FOOD!!

Shades of sky blue; The Indian Roller.

Diminutive Jungle Prinia singing in the shade of midday.

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Coppersmith Barbet feasts on figs. I am so delighted to share this photo. I have always been hoping for a good shot of this bird. Firstly, they are little jewels, secondly they are quite common and vocal, so they’re heard on many of our Indian albums. This image comes from our walk today, when we came across a tree in the grounds of a temple with about a dozen Barbets gorging on the fruit.

A pair of Green Bee-eaters at their vantage perch. The delicate trilling, tinkling calls of Bee-eaters are unique and delightful. This pair were just happy to sit and call every now and then.

A male Indian Robin contemplating his garden. Australia has its Robins, Europe does too, and America… this is what the Indian species looks like. There seem to be a pair in every Indian garden. A lovely bird and quite confiding, difficult to photograph because of the dark plumage, but the dappled light here shows him nicely.

Oriental White-eye plays peek-a-boo. These little birds are so quick! This little fellow stopped eating for just long enough!

Common Hawk Cuckoo in the dappled light of the forest.

A Common Tailorbird hides among the foliage. Sometimes, a bird will get itself right into the heart of shrub, and from every angle you try, the bird shifts slightly to hide itself. Just managed to get this quite atmospheric image from less than a meter away.

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Here we go! – week 1.

Three Plain Prinias cuddle up in the morning sunlight.

Irridescent – the male Purple Sunbird.

Red-vented Bulbul, its beautiful bubbling song is heard in many of India’s gardens. Bulbuls are a common species, but I’m very fond of them, and this is a nice shot with the flowers out of focus behind.

A Black Drongo scans the forest, making aerial forays out to chase insects. I love the little white dot at the base of the bill, characteristic of this species. Their fish tails are also distinctive, and they are easily recognisable as they sit upright on branches looking for their next beakful.

Jungle Babblers after indulging in a mutual preening session. Jungle Babbs are very social birds, often mobbing noisily through the forest in groups of a dozen or more. This pair had just finished preening each other, involving some very fluffed feathers!

Brown Rock Chat, nonchalantly perched on a 2000 year old pillar at Sanchi. We’ve encountered these confiding little birds at many of the archaeological sites we’ve visited recently in central India. Old monuments seem to make great vantage points to look for a tasty morsel. Maybe they are the guardians of these heritage sites!

Yellow-eyed Babbler peers out from among marigolds. What I LOVE about this image, is the way the bird’s yellow eye wattle matches the marigolds.

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Among the mogul ruins of the ancient Indian town of Orchha, are the huge Raja and Jahangir Mahals, the Chaturbhuj Temple and a collection of impressive chhatris (cenotaphs) on the banks of the River Betwa.

Atop the rooftops of these decaying buildings roost a colony of Indian Vultures. They are huge birds, but we didn’t notice them at first as they blend into the baroque ornament of the spires and parapets. However when they spread their wings and take to the air, they cast shadows on the ground, and looking up… well, they are magnificent. When they alight again, they look so much a part of the roofline – medieval gargoyles, stern against the sky.

Sadly, Indian Vultures have suffered huge population declines – around 98% – in recent years, due to the widespread use of a cattle drug which persists in carcasses and causes kidney failure in vultures. The Govt has banned the drug as of 2010, but it is still being used and it will take a while before it is replaced. And many more years before populations of this long-lived bird may recover.

Critically endangered – The majestic Indian Vulture.

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Family of Barn Owls just after dusk – adult on the right, the curious ones are the youngsters!

Before I got the opportunity – actually the next morning – walking across the courtyard, we were beckoned over to see something. A group of young men had one of the juvenile owls tethered by a cord; they must have caught it feeding.

India often presents injustices which foreigners find difficult to respond to, and we’ve come to appreciate that it is usually better to stay sanguine, rather than get angry and self-righteous in someone else’s country. But there was something about this lovely bird, ruffled, tethered, and blinking in the sharp sunlight, and the youth looking for a few tourist rupees to view his prize.

“Why do you do this?” I said sharply. Everyone looked shocked, this was not the response they’d been expecting. I could see they didn’t know much English, and I was communicating more by body language. I indicated they should untie the bird and let it fly.

Fortunately, the groundsman, who picked up some extra income guiding tourists, was keen to keep me happy, and gestured to let the bird go. The cord was untied, but the bird just sat. Maybe it was injured, so I took off my jacket to put over it while I checked for anything obvious. But the owl was fine, and dodging my jacket, took wing and flew off toward its roost.

Two juvenile Barn Owls perched under an ancient mogul gateway in Orchha, India – awaiting mum’s return with a mousy titbit, no doubt.

In retrospect, I’m glad I took action. It was spontaneous and genuine. Explaining the value of wild animals would have been pointless, but demonstrating that there were no rupees in displaying a captive creature I hope sent a more pertinent message.

That evening, I went down to the gateway at 6pm. Three owls were perched, two screeching, which I presume were juveniles with an adult.

Happy hunting!

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Nagzira Wildlife Reserve protects a forested and hilly area in central India where Tigers still roam, and the woodlands are filled with birdsong.

First light across Nagzira Lake.

In the centre of Nagzira forest is a lake, and on the far side, a pair of Grey-headed Fish Eagles roost.

On this recording, made around 5.30am, you’ll hear their morning wake up and pair bonding calling. Dew falls from the leaves of nearby trees, a last chorus of Spotted Owlets is heard before the day begins, fruit bats flutter close to microphone, and the cries of a Lapwing echo from the far end of the lake.

I’ve included a spoken introduction to this recording.

(Thanks to our friend Girish Vaze for his wonderful image of the Fish Eagle.)

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Birdsong has evolved over immense periods of time, and with Australia’s Robins, you can hear that evolution in the songs these birds sing today.

Where we live in southern Australia, there are four closely related, ‘red-breasted’, Robin species (note these are Australian Robins of the Petroicidae family – unrelated to the European or American Robins):

The Rose Robin, Petroica rosea, found in dense, wet forests
The Flame Robin, Petroica phoenicea, which prefers more open areas in heavy forest
The Scarlet Robin, Petroica boodang, common in open woodland
and the Red-capped Robin, Petroica goodenovii, found across the drier inland of the country.

You can see that each of these species are adapted to successively drier habitats.

Over geological time, Australia has gradually ‘dried out’, with the wetter forest types that formerly covered much of the continent now being largely restricted to coastal and highland areas. Thus the wetter forests are the older habitat, and the drying inland a new habitat to which Robins have adapted.

So I’m surmising that the wetter forest species, the Rose Robin, is probably the ‘oldest’, and the others have evolved from that species, leading to the Red-capped Robin being a more recent species adapted to a drying continent.

If so, then each ‘drier country’ species may be expected to have evolved successively. You can see a graduation in their plumage patterns, such as the successively larger size of the forehead ‘flash’, the darkening of the back and the deepening red of the breast color.

I was curious to find whether this was also reflected in their songs – whether you could hear evidence of a successive development in their song structure.

Here are the songs of these four Robin species:

As you can hear, each has a fairly recognisable, and quite pretty, little song. To assist appreciating what is going on in each bird’s song, I’m presenting sonograms of each.

The Rose Robin has what could be called a di-phonic melody, there are two melodic components to it, a higher pitched one, and a lower, the song weaving these together to create a lilting pattern.

The Flame Robin’s song doesn’t show these two clear upper and lower components. Instead they have been integrated into a more singular melodic line, although still showing a lot of rising and falling, ‘lilting’ movement.

By the time we get to the Scarlet Robin however, the single melodic line has ‘levelled out’ to being almost on one pitch.

So you can see a successive relationship quite clearly in the songs of the Rose, Flame and Scarlet species, which each have a similar dainty, twittery song.

However, the Red-capped Robin seems at first to have an utterly different song. It still has that dainty quality, but rather than the melodic ripple of the other red Robins, it is comprised of two repeated syllables. When you look closely at a sonogram, each syllable is actually a rapid trill, with chipping, ‘grace-notes’ before and after.

Is the Red-capped Robin’s song actually related to that of the other red Robins, when it sounds so different?

Lets go back to the Scarlet Robin’s song. If you look closely at the sonogram (and you can just hear it too if you have ‘quick’ ears), you will see a tiny pair of trills hiding among the sonic structure. One is almost not there at all, but the other is clear enough. It is the same trill structure as the Red-capped. And you can also find that the melodic components in the other Robin’s songs have de-volved to those little ‘grace-notes’ that bookend the Red-cap’s trills.

So you can both see and hear a progressive relationship in the songs of these four closely related Robin species that matches the changes in their chosen habitats.

Australia has other related Robin species, for instance the yellow robins, which look and sound quite different and are thus likely to be less closely related to the ‘red’ robins, and the Hooded Robin, who’s song does show similar structures and can easily be seen as just a ‘red’ robin that has lost its ‘red’.

What this leads to is an appreciation that, when you are outdoors surrounded by birdsong, you are hearing not just a unrelated variety of avian vocalisations, but a soundscape that has evolved.

It may not be evident until you listen closely, but you can actually hear the evolutionary history of our planet in the birdsong around you.

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For me, the dawn chorus is nature’s great symphony.

It is a time when nature transitions from the gentle sounds of the night into the activity of the day.

Over the period of around an hour, (which incidentally, is a similar duration to that of a decent classical music symphony), the sounds of nature build and evolve into complex and rich patterns, eventually subsiding into the activity of the day.

I don’t know how many dawn choruses we’ve recorded over the years, but one thing that amazes me is that they can be quite variable, depending upon location, richness of habitat, the season or local weather conditions. They can be rich with diversity, or somewhat thin and disappointing.

Our new album ‘Dawn Chorus: Tanzania’, is the former – one of the most vibrant mornings of birdsong we heard during our recent 7 weeks field recording in East Africa.

Here I introduce how we made this recording.

This is the first album in our new ‘Dawn Chorus’ series. The next two have also recently been released; lovely recordings from late spring in Scandinavia and the dry inland of Australia -

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These pics were not easy to get, as thornbills are continually on the move – even on this crisp and cold morning, when we awoke to our first overnight frost of the winter.

Such cute little fluffballs!

Chipping away continually as they glean out their breakfast from among the eucalypt leaves.

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After 11 years of deep drought in southern Australia, we have finally had record-breaking rains, and the landscape is coming back to life.

Most notably, the frogs have been very active, calling from wherever water has come to rest.

This recording is of a frog chorus from our bush dam, and features several species, most notably Pobblebonks, Limnodynastes dumerilii , or Eastern Banjo Frogs, with their wonderful, musical patterns of plonking notes. Also calling are two species of tiny Crinias, or Brown Froglets; c. signifera and c. parinsignifera, plus Spotted Marsh Frogs (loud “Tack!”s) and Brown Tree Frogs (whistling; “Weep-eep-eep-eep”)

With multiple species call in close proximity to each other, each needs to make itself heard. They do this by either focusing their calls into specific tonal bands (crinias and Brown Tree Frogs), or setting up rhythmically-spaced patterns of calls (Pobblebonks and Marsh Frogs).

This sonogram depicts a 15 second excerpt from the recording, and shows each species’ vocalisation quite clearly. (Time on this sonogram runs on the horizontal axis, and frequency on the vertical)

1. group of Pobblebonks
2. Spotted Marsh Frogs
3. Crinias
4. single Brown Tree Frog
5. “Roark” variation call of Pobblebonk (which sounds utterly different to its usual “Plonk!” call, but you can see it occupies the same frequency band).

The species here (especially those wonderful Pobblebonks) are featured on our album “Frogs, Frogs, Frogs“, along with a fascinating diversity of other frogscapes from around Australia.

Below is a sample from the album:

‘Frogs, Frogs, Frogs!’ – album sample by Listening Earth

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