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Why is Don such a big deal to the animals and birds out there?
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That's what we're going to talk about today.
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Hi, this is Jill from the North Woods talking about nature right outside our front door.
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Just imagine maybe your backyard or maybe the local marsh that's close to your house
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and pick a specific morning just before sunrise.
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Or maybe even in the North Woods, April, early May, and it's still just a little bit dark.
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It's still just the hinges of coldness overnight.
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You still feel the coldness, the dampness.
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There's a single sliver of light on the horizon and guess what?
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The birds start singing.
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It's one bird and then another joint in and another joint in it within 20 minutes.
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The trees, the shrubs, the skies around you are erupting in sound.
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It's layering over each other and it's such a beautiful sound.
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I'm not a morning person, so the really the time I hear this is when I go camping.
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I mentioned before that when I went camping, there was this one, it was quiet at night.
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The birds go to sleep.
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They don't want to get picked off in the middle of the night, so they quiet down after sunset.
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Boy, there was this one bird and he chirped basically all the way up to midnight and then
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all of a sudden I woke up.
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I don't know, somewhere like I said around 5 o'clock in the morning and had to go to
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I got off my tent and I walked over to the bathroom.
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That bird picked up right there again.
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He was single bird and then suddenly he was joined by the Cardinal, joined by the Robin.
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When I hear Don Corris, it's usually because I'm camping and it is amazing.
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Once you've heard it and you've really, really heard it, it will stun you.
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You'll never take a quiet morning for granted again.
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The thing about the Don Corris is, it isn't random.
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Every single thing that happens about the Don Corris, when it starts, who goes first,
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how long it lasts, why it happens that Don specifically has reasons to that and that's
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what we're going to talk about.
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The first part of it is that what is the Don Corris?
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It's a surge of birds' song, roughly 30 to 90 minutes, around sunrise, peeking somewhere
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in the spring, where birds are trying to establish their territory.
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You see Redwood and Blackbirds trying to claim their area, but also trying to find a mate.
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The men birds that sing are trying to attract their babe and it happens year round to some
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extent, but it's not so much in winter and in my neck of the woods, but in other places
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It's year round, but in spring, it's a lot of us.
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It's the most complex and it's the most of the species are participating in it.
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It's not unique to any place.
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I live here in the North Woods, but you might live somewhere else.
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You too will have a Don Corris if the season is right and maybe if you don't have harsh
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winters, maybe it is all year long, but it happens on every continent where there are
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This will be the same phenomenon and it is the same reasons everywhere in the world.
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I can say where I live, it's usually somewhere between late April through June and birds will
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sing in the morning because they do sing more, but the Don Corris where it really kicks
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in is going to be during that particular peak.
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That's going to be the peak of it.
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The morning that most species are simultaneously singing tends to be, for me, more like mid-May.
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It may be different for you, but when the spring migrants have arrived, and for me, they usually
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arrive for the most part by mid-May.
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That's usually where it's at.
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When the spring migrants have arrived, they might not have quite settled in, gotten into
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their nesting routine.
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There is actually an international Don Corris Day that is held on the first Sunday of May,
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so people around the world try to go out specifically on that day and listen.
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It started in Birmingham, England in the 1980s and now has spread out globally.
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Like I said, mine comes a little bit later than that.
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England is a little bit more temperate than where I live, but it's a good chance that
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you'll get it here during the timeframe, all the birds singing.
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The heart of this is that the birds are singing specifically the loudest at Don, and there's
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a couple of reasons for it, is that first of all, the light is still too dim to forage,
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so they don't have anything else to do because it's still too low.
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The insects aren't active yet, the insects are not warm-blooded creatures, so they are
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low activity when it's kind of colder in the morning.
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It's too dark to hunt, it's too cold to hunt, and so instead of wasting energy for an activity
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that's not at its best, they start communicating.
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The singing does cost energy, but it costs a lot less energy than foraging around in the
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Don is essentially a dead time for feeding, so the birds fill it with social tasks that
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they're establishing who they are, where they're standing, and what kind of babe they're
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looking for, and that's what they're doing.
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Sound also travels farther and clearer at Don.
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One of the most remarkable things about this is that early Don, the sun heats up the ground
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and the atmosphere layers a little bit differently than it does during the day, so the sound waves
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actually travel a little bit farther along the ground level than it would at other times
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during the day, and so that means that the song, being sung at Don, can carry maybe two
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to three times farther than maybe if you're saying that same song at noon.
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The birds singing at Don broadcasts to a much larger audience, and that's really quite
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The hornones also peak for birds at Don in spring, the male songbirds experience a surge of
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testosterone, driven by which is hormone driven, and that is triggered by the increasingly
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longer days, so the longer these days come in, suddenly the birds in their home runs kick
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off as part of their breeding season, and that makes them more aggressively singing in
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the morning time about their territory and about finding a mate.
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And right at Don, that's when they're hitting their peak hormone levels, and the urgency
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is a little bit stronger at that point.
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And if you think about the Don chorus as almost like a neighborhood roll call, every
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male in the area is announcing the territory.
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I'm right here, made it through the night, territory still mine, and a male who goes
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silent in the morning is signaling maybe illness, weakness, and a rival might even notice
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A potential mate will not come because they don't hear the song coming through, showing
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up singing loudly in the morning is like leaving your card, right?
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I'm here, this is my place, come meet me for drinks, you know, that kind of thing.
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It's a signal of fitness.
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Now I can tell you that my bird is having some health struggles right now, and he stops
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And he is not at this point, he would start singing at this point, he is not singing.
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And so I think if a bird is not feeling well enough to sing, it means that they're not
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well enough to attract a mate either.
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And it's a signal, right?
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It is definitely a signal.
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So then comes the other interesting question about what is the order of the birds?
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Does this one bird kick it off?
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And different species don't join in at a very specific predictable time related to sunrise.
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And they call this sequence, the sequence of onset.
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And it is consistent enough that you could actually, I don't say tell time, but you can
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see how the morning is progressing by listening to which birds are actually singing.
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So the early singers, the ones who go first tend to be the birds with the largest eyes
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relative to their head, that gives them more light.
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The birds can see well enough to function, remember I mentioned before, that once you
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start singing, it is putting your credit card, business card down saying this is my area,
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I'm here, but it also means that if you were a predator, the predators see better and
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And if you can't see that predator coming at you, you won't be able to get away.
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It makes a bird vulnerable at that point.
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So what you'll see is that robins are very famously early singers, often starting about
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30 to 40 minutes before sunrise, toes, wood thrushes, oven birds, early risers too.
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And so when you start hearing the robins sing in the dark, you know it's about to open
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this whole dawn of chorus coming up in the morning.
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In fact, in my backyard, sometimes when I'm trying to sleep, in winter time, I can't
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really tell what time it is unless the light has come up, but sometimes it is pitch black
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And I will hear the robins go and then I'll hear the cardinals go.
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And then it's a signal like, uh, you really got it like, you know, this much time left
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on your, on your alarm system.
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So I know it's coming soon.
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The middle layers are often like more like the song sparrows, yellow warblers, these are
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going to be the smaller birds, common yellow throws, red wing black birds.
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And that means that they add to this kind of complex of sound.
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There's a real light in the sky at this particular place.
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And it is so chock full of birds.
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What's amazing about it, and I'll talk about this in another show sometime, is the
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Atmerlin, where you can let it run, and it can hear the birds singing when you have a
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course of birds singing.
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To me, it is tripped, tripped, tripped, you know, it's very hard to hear unless you really
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know that bird well, what is singing in any given moment.
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It is a cacophony, a mishmash of all sorts of birds singing.
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Maulen is able to tease it out.
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I mean, that's kind of the most amazing thing about it.
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And then the late joiners tend to be like the house burrows, the house runs, more of the
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suburban species that come in.
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And they wait until they're comfortable before they start singing.
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So when this means to all of us who go out there in the dark, we, when we hear only one
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or two voices, you're going to kind of catch the very opening notes of the chorus.
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But you give it 20 minutes and you'll start to hear it build and build, and then more
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and more birds jump in.
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Like I said, if you're looking at some early and late singers, you'll start noticing, but
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by the time this is going full blown singing, you're going to have the robins, the thrushes,
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the sparrows, the toes, the redwing blackbirds, all the thrushes that are out there, I said
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thrushes, the warblers, the common yellow thrushes, warblers, Baltimore orals, scarlet
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handagers, they are all going to start kicking in and they're going to start singing at the
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Viri, that's the one that was singing very late into the night when it was camping and
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was one of the ones that was singing.
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But essentially it's going to start coming in and it gets pretty amazing.
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When you add on to this Don Corus, the females are out there listening, they're evaluating.
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The male singer who sings earlier, longer, louder, maybe with more complexity.
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Every once in a while you'll hear, you know, maybe I think of Cardinals, you know, where
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And then all of a sudden there's like made up notes at the end and you're like, that's
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not really part of a cardinal song when they add that complexity, that little extra something
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in their song, it's advertising.
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Not only can I sing my bird song to you, I'm super fit.
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I could even make up some additional song after that.
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So that Don singing requires the bird, like I said, to have survived the night, being
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good condition, be healthy enough, have enough energy reserves on them so that they can
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sing a song before eating breakfast.
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So it is a sign of health for that bird and the females are out there listening and like
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I said, they're listening for that loud, early voice and maybe even a little complexity
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It costs real resources for a bird to do anything before they have had a chance to eat.
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So the females are paying attention and the males who sing, like I said, better, whole
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better territory, they father more offspring.
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And so it's not just about, you know, creating this cacophony, this Don Corus, it's about
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putting your presence out there, attracting the female sing.
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I'm super healthy and I'm well fed too.
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So in those spaces, that's where those pair bonds are maintained.
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And the Don Corus, like I said, isn't a one-sided broadcast because the other side is listening
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to it and saying, okay, there's my mate right there.
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So one thing to mention that when we look at the Don Corus in the broader sense of things,
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it was also more than just the birds.
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If you get my neck of the woods, you might start hearing spring peepers, wood frogs in
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That's why I said marshes are almost even a little bit better.
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I hear them in my backyard, but I don't have peepers and frogs in my backyard.
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Well, you'd have frogs in my backyard, but not these particular frogs.
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And then you might hear the frogs join in on this noise.
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Then the woodpeckers will be drumming on the tree.
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They do that not only to catch bugs, which we know that they drum on the trees to get
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the bugs out, they're also drumming again for territorial purposes.
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So that the other woodpeckers know, I'm on this tree, this area is mine.
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And then they also drum on the tree so that it makes the insects active.
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And then the birds are able to pick those insects out.
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So again, the woodpeckers that are the loudest, that are doing the most drumming in the
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morning, they're also drumming up their breakfast as well.
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It's really great to get out there and start listening to this full texture of sounds
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coming right, like I said, just before sunrise and then afterwards.
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And then the warmth of the air comes in.
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I know when I go bird watching early, at some point the birds are very, like I said,
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way up in the canopy.
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And then when the sun starts to come in a little bit more, the dawn chorus comes down
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and you start seeing bugs flying around.
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And then that's when the birds come out, the birds come out of the trees and start eating
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And then the chorus dies down a little bit, fades a little bit, and the birds take off
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and disperse to try to feed.
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That's why bird watching the morning is such a worthwhile endeavor.
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So I hope that gives you a chance, maybe, you know, to set an alarm sometime this spring
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go aside 30 minutes before sunrise.
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And you don't even have to know what the birds are, although you can get the Merlin app
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on your phone and find out what the birds are, but just listen to it.
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Just hear how many different voices you hear out there.
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It's just, like I said, if you get out there into a place where there's a lot of different
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kinds of birds, maybe a marshland, it's one of those sounds that you'll never forget.
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One thing to note about the Robin is that Robbins, when you have them nearby, pay attention,
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like I said, when they start singing, like I said, they're almost always the early bird.
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And that single bird kind of kicks off a nighttime of quiet.
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And I, like I said, that's something I noticed when I'm sitting in bed, I can hear the
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Robbins in my backyard.
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I think these bird songs are just beautiful.
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You might take note about the International Dawn Chorus Day.
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Like I said, the first Sunday in May, you can put it on your calendar.
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You know, like I said, but you might want to adjust.
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For me, it's in there, you know, but it's a little bit later for me.
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Again, if you're looking for another book, I'm going to give you another Burt Heintra
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book called, Trees in My Forest.
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And he talks a little bit about the soundscape in the early morning in the forest setting
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and his experiences with it.
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His writings, like I said, they're so tuned into the observation of nature with a little
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light science in there.
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It's a really great companion to this particular episode.
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You can also find out why Bird Sing by David Rothenberg.
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It's another really good book.
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It uncovers this exploration of birds and its music.
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So I appreciate you being out there.
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Remember that you can always email me at jillestartwithsmallsteps.com.
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I hope you're having a great day.
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I hope you're getting out there and listening to nature outside your front door.
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Like I said, in my backyard, it's not even outside my front door.
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It's out my bedroom window.
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But I hope you're enjoying it.
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Leave a comment if you're watching this on video.
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It's also a podcast.
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You can email me at jillestartwithsmallsteps.com.
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Thanks so much for being out there.
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And I hope you come back.
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I hope you're having a great day.
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I hope you're having a great day.