Morning Chorus — 16 September 2026

After a break, I’ve started recording the morning chorus again, as a way of discovering who is sharing the land with us.

This morning’s recording ran for just over half an hour and ended at 8am. There were plenty of quiet bits in the recording, but it still identified 19 species:

Robin, chaffinch, blue tit, blackcap, great tit, chiffchaff, wren, treecreeper, coal tit, jackdaw, greylag goose, spotted flycatcher, blackbird, song thrush, white wagtail, siskin, house martin, hawfinch and goldcrest.

This isn’t intended as a definitive bird survey. It is a way of paying attention over time: noticing which voices are always here, which arrive with the seasons and which make an unexpected appearance. I also really want to know how late the house martins stick around—last year, a late brood was still here in early October.

Birds are identified mainly by sound using the Merlin Bird ID app. The list is a record of what the app detected rather than a confirmed survey, so occasional misidentifications are possible—particularly with unexpected or particularly exotic visitors.