Set your alarm for International Dawn Chorus Day Norman Jackson

 Set your alarm. This Sunday, May 3rd, something extraordinary will happen at 5am in the fields and lanes around Betchworth and Buckland — and almost nobody will be awake to hear it.

It's International Dawn Chorus Day once again, the one morning in the year when people around the world are invited to step outside before sunrise and listen. What they hear is one of the most astonishing natural performances on earth: the dawn chorus, the great collective outpouring of birdsong that erupts in the half-light of an early May morning and builds, layer by layer, into a full orchestral spectacle before most of us have even opened our eyes.

It begins in near-darkness. Song thrushes, blackbirds and robins are the opening soloists, staking their claims in the still, cool air when sound carries furthest and rivals are listening hardest. Then the wrens add their improbably loud rattle, the chiffchaffs start their rhythmic two-note call, the blackcaps deliver their rich, accelerating warble, and gradually — tit by tit, warbler by warbler — the whole neighbourhood joins in. By 6am, if you are standing in the right spot, the air around you is alive with the overlapping songs of a dozen or more species singing simultaneously at full intensity. There is nothing quite like it.

This year we are establishing a Betchworth and Buckland Nature Trail, to help connect people to nature and encourage us to appreciate the biodiversity that surrounds us. Our first project is to record the dawn chorus at 12 locations along the route and using the Merlin bird identification app reveal exactly who is singing and where. The result is a dawn chorus sound map of our local landscape. There is no substitute for being immersed in the dawn call but if Sunday's alarm feels like a step too far, our Nature Trail Dawn Chorus Sound Map sound map is waiting for you. 

NB It looks like it will rain early Sunday morning but don't worry you can experience the Dawn Chorus on a dry morning any time this week.