Vernal Equinox

"cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up"

Today I woke to the songs of Robin. It was still dark outside. Two hours before dawn. At my home, the American Robin is always first in the dawn chorus. As I sat there listing to the robins song I was reminded of a friend. A friend of birding and spring time.

Beth and I sat one morning, in our car just outside of Jordan River Parkway. We were waiting for dawn and a few hours of birding before work. As we sat there talking, we heard the American Robin's song. We paused our talk and listened. Its song melodiously interrupting the silence of night. After the robin was silent, she informed me that the American Robin song is always the first heard in the dawn chorus. She then spoke of a study regarding the sequence of morning bird song and why one bird will predictably sing before the other. After a brief google, I found one scientific paper describing such a study.

"The concentration of avian song at first light (i.e. the dawn chorus) is widely appreciated, but has an enigmatic functional significance. One widely accepted explanation is that birds are active at dawn, but light levels are not yet adequate for foraging. In forest communities, the onset to singing should thus be predictable from the species' foraging strata, which is ultimately related to ambient light level. To test this, we collected data from a tropical forest of Ecuador involving 57 species from 27 families of birds. Time of first song was a repeatable, species-specific trait, and the majority of resident birds, including non-passerines, sang in the dawn chorus. For passerine birds, foraging height was the best predictor of time of first song, with canopy birds singing earlier than birds foraging closer to the forest floor. A weak and opposite result was observed for non-passerines. For passerine birds, eye size also predicted time of first song, with larger eyed birds singing earlier, after controlling for body mass, taxonomic group and foraging height. This is the first comparative study of the dawn chorus in the Neotropics, and it provides the first evidence for foraging strata as the primary determinant of scheduling participation in the dawn chorus of birds."

I found it strange to read what I interpret as art, music, and emotion described through the eyes of a scientist. Although, from the first sentence of this abstract, I feel the authors also struggled to remove themselves from the emotional feelings they have regarding the songs of birds.

"The concentration of avian song at first light is widely appreciated, but has an enigmatic functional significance." The definition of appreciate is to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of something and the definition of enigmatic is to resemble an enigma, perplexing, and mysterious. I think these words perfectly describe the value of the robins song and what I felt this morning as I drank my coffee and listened.

"cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up"

So after all that, what I really want to say is happy spring!
Now go out and plant some peas in celebration!