The birds have gone quiet, this is not because lockdown is easing and we’re scaring them all away!
After all the raucous calls and songs of spring, many of our songbird’s chicks have fledged their nests now. So it’s time for a change of strategy, the adults lead the juveniles to forage and fatten up under the cover of thick hedges and undergrowth.
Accompanied by their weaker juveniles, it wouldn’t be a good idea to draw attention to themselves, so to prevent predators finding them the adults don’t sing.
If you feed the birds in your garden you will still be getting regular visitors and on the ground clearing up the mess the perched birds have made, you will likely find blackbirds and dunnocks.
Unlike most birds dunnocks do not breed in pairs but instead form groups of up to 3 males and 3 females, with 2 males and 1 female being the most common. This unconventional family set up outraged early Victorian naturalists, many of them priests.
By River Six
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