ON MILD mornings there is a soft whistling to be heard in the air in many towns and villages, and also on housing estates.
Starlings are singing quietly on television aerials and chimney pots, and their whistles carry for some distance, although the clicking and grinding notes in their song do not.
They are starting to claim their nest-holes and territories, though it will be getting on for three months before they actually start nesting.
Towards evening they gather in small parties, often high up on transmission masts and in the tops of Lombardy poplars, and sing together, with the whole chorus now being audible a long way away.
Just before dusk these small groups join up with others over dense woods and reedbeds, until flocks that are sometimes like enormous clouds wheel and divide in the sky until they all go streaming down into their roosting place. In the morning they radiate out in circles from the roost.
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Great tits are also singing more. As well as their familiar “teacher, teacher” song, they have other spring notes, some harsh, some piping, that are often repeated a number of times in the same way. DJM