Dusk Chorus in South Mcr

Last night saw our first Breathing Spaces Dusk Chorus listening event at Parrs Wood Environmental Centre. Last year we carried out a Dawn Chorus listening event which was incredible but just too early for most people from our project. So this year, it was Kit Walker's idea to hold a Dusk Chorus event instead. We basically did the program in reverse to the Dawn Chorus. That is, we met at 7.30pm in the greenhouse for tea and a chat about what we were doing and why, then a walk around the different habitats led by Harriet a Parrs Wood Volunteer. Harriet stopped so that we can focus on listening in the different places and then we were lead over to the woodland area where we sat for 45 minutes listening to the final chorus of bird song of the day.

The chorus was very different to last years Dawn Chorus in that it was more drawn out, less bird species and less individual birds, the utterances were more spaced out and there did seem to be noticeable exchanges between the blackbirds - at times like alarm calls. There was also a lot more city sounds coming in than in the early hours. There was actually an alarm that sounded for much of the listening time, which caused much discussion afterwards.

I sat back from the group to make the recording and also to keep watch over the group. Half way through our listening in the woodland a fox trotted into the space only to look up and see us all sat there in silence. It looked surprised and back tracked taking a longer route around us.

Please do visit our Listening Page to hear our recording of this Dusk Chorus in Parrs Wood Environmental Centre 5/5/19.

Many thanks to our dear friends at PWEC who offered us great hospitality and joined us on this special event. If you would like to find out more about PWEC, and visit the gardens there next open day is Maytime Fair on the next Bank Holiday weekend: 27 May 1-4pm - don't forget to take your purses as you can buy beautiful jams, chutneys, lemon curd, plants and lots of other wholesome goodies!