Redstart: interpreting song

White-beam favoured by redstart

To watch redstart singing in the white-beam rising from Scout Scar escarpment, I have to be there soon after sunrise. The cliff-edge is the viewpoint, popular with runners and dog walkers and the redstart tolerate neither.  I approach the cliff with caution,  so as not to disturb the birds. But after a glorious redstart morning three days ago there's nothing. A blustery wind didn't deter them before. Perhaps the early frost and the chill in the NNE wind affects them. 

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It's a cloudy, blustery morning of fitful light. Cold enough to freeze one's eyelashes. But the valiant skylark are singing their hearts out.  So are willow warbler.  So forget the silent redstart and listen, I tell myself.  Willow warbler song is a delight: that strain again, it hath a dying fall.  And a song thrush in leafless ash sings loudly. I stop for a photo-sequence, despite the cloud that blots out the sun.  I'd like my bird better lit. It sings from within a cage of twigs, using them to mask its presence.  So I have to step through brambles, warily, so as not to frighten the song thrush, to see it clear of white -beam buds and twigs.  And there's a runner hoping to go right by me and off the track into the scrub. She sees what I'm doing and hesitates.  The bird is intent on song and she passes below its tree, slowly, having paused to admire it.

Chasing the dawn chorus across Europe with Brett Westwood and special guests ( BBC radio 4)  sounded an invitation not to be missed.
We're hearing a backdrop of the dawn chorus, said the presenter.  This broadcast was all about the human voice, whether or not there was something worth saying, it was said anyway, over and over.  An incessant overlay of people talking. 
'I sing to the oystercatcher and they tend to fly away,' she said. Her song pained me, I need the real thing as an antidote.