Morning Chorus — 17 September 2026

This morning’s half-hour recording picked up 18 species:

Robin, wren, chaffinch, spotted flycatcher, carrion crow, house sparrow, hooded crow, meadow pipit, wood pigeon, blue tit, jackdaw, house martin, coal tit, white wagtail, blackbird, chiffchaff, pink-footed goose and goldfinch.

The house martins are still here, just as I hoped.

Earlier, I’d made a shorter recording at the end of the road. It picked up just five species: long-tailed tit, song thrush, dunnock, chaffinch and coal tit.

That’s not a direct comparison—the earlier recording was only about ten minutes—but the difference in the soundscape was striking. There’s more traffic and less varied tree cover at the end of the road. Here, the mixture of trees, rough edges, hedges, shelter, open ground and relative peace may help explain the extraordinary range of birds.

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.