Christine's walking & birds blog

There is a posting on Herefordshire's go birding website of a blackbird singing this morning. It sang for about 5 minutes, which is similar to the one here this afternoon.

In my experience, blackbirds do occasionally sing in the autumn and winter, but generally they fall quiet at the end of the summer. What conditions today made two blackbirds, many miles apart, start to sing? Of course the same bird might have sung here yesterday while we were out, and presumably there were others today that sang unnoticed.

But there is often a sort of synchronisation in bird behaviour, whether it's an odd quirk of behaviour or seasonal change. It might be tawny owls in the autumn; one night I will start hearing them at home after their summer silence/absence, and then find that other observers have reported the same thing happening round their homes on the same night. Intriguing.