Up with the lark
Radio 3’s Breakfast presenter Tom McKinney relishes the early starts and a life-affirming dawn chorus
Michael Driver
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On Monday 7 April I’ll have the privilege of taking on Radio 3’s weekday Breakfast show. Friends and family are all wishing me well, but they’re also worried about the 4am alarm every day. I’ll certainly be asking for some advice from Petroc Trelawny on how he’s handled that lifestyle for the past 14 years. (It’s his last show on 4 April.)
But what everyone seems to forget is that I’ve always been an early riser. And the reason for the dawn starts is to get the best out of the birds.
My love of birds has always been there with my passion for classical music. And if you don’t want to miss birds at their peak, you need to get out of bed nice and early. Often ridiculously early – 2am if I want to get from my home in north-west Derbyshire to the Norfolk coast in time for an April sunrise. My philosophy is you can always collapse into an afternoon snooze once you’ve savoured the birds at their very best.
Tom McKinney. BBC
For the last year I’ve been presenting Radio 3 Breakfast on Sundays, and near the start of the show we’ve been playing a different bird’s song every week as part of our Dawn Chorus. It’s been such a pleasure reading so many messages from listeners, all craving the natural world to start their day; birds singing in their gardens and visiting their feeders. There’s even a regular in New Zealand who sends us pictures of the mountain view from his back window and lists all the birds he’s seen and heard. I’ve promised that one day I’ll pay him a visit.
I went through a low period and birdsong was a huge help
It’s reinforced what I already believed, which is that birds mean so much to people. And with good reason, because I have no doubt that birds can genuinely improve your quality of life. Don’t take my word for it; have a look online for studies into the effects of birdsong on mental health, and the serious research recommending that doctors should include listening to birds among ways to treat depression and anxiety.
I went through a low period myself, and birdsong was a huge help. Getting out of the house and letting the sounds of birds fill up my brain somehow temporarily shut out all the things that were having a negative impact on my thoughts and mood. It brought about a sense of calm that nothing else could quite match.
So what’s my favourite birdsong? It’s impossible to answer, but I’d have to include not a song as such, but a flock of screaming swifts. They’ll be back over British skies soon, and it’s a life-affirming sound that instantly takes me back in time to school summer holidays. I’d also have to mention the song of a musician wren, a bird I first heard when I went to South America in my early 20s. I’ve never heard anything quite like it – they whistle perfect musical notes, but in an order and with rhythms and phrases that seem completely alien.
In fact, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a stunning orchestral work called Uirapuru, which is the traditional Amazonian name for a musician wren. The folklore around the uirapuru is similar to our close relationship in Europe to birds like nightingales and cuckoos.
Birds have been a feature of so much music by great composers. That perennial favourite The Lark Ascending springs to mind, yet the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, some of the most instantly recognisable music ever written, is believed by many to be Beethoven’s take on the four simple and gentle notes sung by a yellowhammer. And in Beethoven’s Sixth, he gets the instruments to imitate birds singing by a brook. Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony came out of an encounter with migrating swans over the wilderness of Finland. And a special mention for A Hermit Thrush at Eve, a beautiful piece of piano music by Amy Beach that manages to capture not only the bird’s uniquely special song, but also the atmosphere and sensations of being in a forest on a warm summer night.
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So, will there be a Dawn Chorus on Radio 3 from Monday to Friday, now that I’m moving from Sundays to weekdays? You’ll have to tune in to find out...
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