Last walk of the season + recommended listens

Join me at Herstmonceux Castle next Saturday for summer's birdsong

Spring is so last month, and that means that next Saturday will be the fourth and final birdsong walkshop of the season at Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex.

We’ll be making a circuit of the castle while listening for some special birds, including Firecrest, Spotted Flycatcher and Cuckoo, and no doubt recording many others along the way. We found 36 different species on our last morning together, and more of summer’s birds have arrived since then.

A ticket buys you narrated lessons to prepare you for the morning, a gentle 2.5 hr walk and a sit-down Q&A at the cafe to end, with links to audio for all the birds we hear following the day.

Places are limited to a maximum of 12. More details and booking info.

Birdsong research: could you help?

Can you help us understand more about what happens too us when we listen to birds?

My good friend and colleague Tamsin Bishton is looking for a few people to talk to about their experiences of birdsong, as part of her dissertation as an MSc student at University of Brighton.

In particular, Tamsin is interested in exploring people's attitudes and motivations to the climate emergency during and after participation in a birdsong course, and she is hoping to recruit participants from people who have taken part in a course with Birdsong Academy.

If you’d like to find out more, please email Tamsin at t.bishton1@uni.brighton.ac.uk.

Now listening to….

wilding.radio - hear live sounds from the beaver enclosure at Knepp, day or night. Listening as I write this evening, I can hear Blackbirds, Treecreepers, Rooks (and, ok, an aircraft or two) in brilliant stereoscopic sound. I’m not confident I can identify a swimming beaver yet. But after a few nights of this on the 100% underwater setting, who knows?

Libby - did you know you can borrow audiobooks, for free, via your library membership, on an app? You did? Well it was recent news to me. Depending on your library’s collection, you could try Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? by Lev Parisian, or Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed by Simon Barnes. Or even, you know, books that aren’t about birds. Amazing!

Death & Birds - it’s a wonderful thing when someone elects to share their love of the world in a shape that makes sense to them, however odd that might appear to others. In this case, the results are very special. This Substack publication by Chloe Hope is recently hatched, and already the archive is to be treasured.

Latest birdsong guides

Garden Warblers… still happy to confuse us throughout June

Species featured in recent weeks over on Shriek of the Week include:

Stock Dove
Greenfinch
Garden Warbler

The frequency winds down with the birdsong, so from the end of June it’s a bird every month, until January. As a paying subscriber you can continue to get access to narrated versions, including the full archive, and an invitation to join a monthly live call on the first Saturday of the month (next time we’ll be listening to wilding.radio together).

You can also buy a gift subscription, for a month (£5) or a year (£25). And it’s Father’s Day next weekend. Just saying!

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That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, enjoy the birds.

~ Charlie