Alternative Wheel: Other seasonal cycle stories
When this column started, it was all about exploring different ways of thinking about the wheel of the year, reflecting on aspects of the natural world to provide Pagans alternatives to the usual solar stories. It's still very much an alternative wheel, but there's a developing emphasis on what we can celebrate as the seasons turn. Faced with environmental crisis, and an uncertain future, celebration is a powerful soul restoring antidote that will help us all keep going, stay hopeful and dream up better ways of being.
Celebrating the Dawn Chorus
Most usually people talk about the dawn chorus at midsummer – that’s when events to experience it seem to be organised. It is the case that the midsummer dawn chorus is the longest and loudest. However, you also need to be awake by four in the morning here in the UK, and that’s not easy, nor is it practical for some of us.
There is always a dawn chorus. In winter it’s brief, but even so I usually hear something. However, now in early spring is a great time for encountering and appreciating dawn bird song. Firstly it’s often warm enough to have the windows open a bit at night. If there are any trees in your vicinity, there’s a fair chance of birdsong, and of being able to lie in bed and hear it. Otherwise, it means being out at about six am, which is a good deal more feasible.
The dawn chorus usually starts ahead of the dawn – there’s always some light before the sun is properly up, but the singing can start while it’s still dark. It begins usually with one voice – I think most normally a blackbird where I am. One bird who decides that even though it’s dark, the sun is coming. Or perhaps one bird who decides that it is time to sing the sun back into the world. Perhaps human habits of calling the sun up come from bird songs. Gradually other voices come in, the light increases, and then the bird song diffuses into the more intermittent calling of getting on with the day.
The image I’ve used isn’t of songbirds but of crows. I happen to like the more discordant voices alongside the sweet ones. Corvids, geese, ducks, and pheasants – and all the rest not reputed for signing.
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Each day I am fortunate enough to hear the Dawn Chorus, living in central Florida in the USA the weather is fairly warm even in winter, some mornings the chorus begins before 4 a.m. starting with a single chirp or two with several pauses then after a few moments a crescendo builds and the air is alive with bird song. I have quite a few shrubs along the front of my house one at my bedroom window which host a nest, several nest in the trees in my yard so most days I am get a concert. There's a calming effect to have the early streaks of pre-dawn light shine through your window with the chorus of bird song letting you know a new day is beginning. Last night we had heavy rains and like clock work the dawn chorus began. It is now 9:00 in the morning and the birds still sing.