dawn chorus

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English[edit]

WOTD – 5 May 2024

Etymology[edit]

A European robin (Erithacus rubecula) singing at dawn.
A recording of a dawn chorus (sense 1) in Slovakia.

From dawn (noun) +‎ chorus (noun).[1]

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

dawn chorus (plural dawn choruses)

  2. Birdsong by a large number of birds occurring in the early morning.
    Synonym: dawn choir
    Hypernym: bird chorus
    • 1898 August 27, S. W. F., “July in South Devon”, in The Garden: An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Horticulture in All Its Branches, volume LIV, number 1397, London, →OCLC, page 160, column 2:
      But the music of the spring-tide is past; the cuckoo is no longer vocal; the dawn-chorus is silent; summer has stilled the voices that but lately trilled so tirelessly, and, until another spring arrives, hedgerow and spinney will not again resound with the singing of the birds.
    • 1914, W. Parkinson Curtis, “Phenological Report on First Appearances of Birds, Insects, &c., andf First Flowering of Plants in Dorset during 1913”, in Henry Symonds, editor, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, volume XXXV, Dorchester, Dorset: […] Dorset County Chronicle office, →OCLC, page 195:
      [I]t was a poor woodcock year in the South of England; that young starlings were nearly fledged on the 25h January 1913; that the dawn choruses in March and up to the 10th April were very short, five to ten minutes only; the killing East and South wind and bitter cold effectually preventing, and generally that song was short and weak.
    • 1971 July–September, “Book Reviews”, in W. A. Sledge, editor, The Naturalist: A Quarterly Journal Principally for the North of England, number 918, Leeds, Yorkshire: Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 116:
      Woodland Birds takes one through the year in our broad-leafed woodlands and many of the very well-known voices of the habitat are beautifully recorded, the dawn choruses of the various spring months being exceptionally interesting.
    • 2008, Nicholas Drayson, chapter 5, in A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, London: Penguin Books, published 2012, →ISBN, pages 24–25:
      [T]he hadada is a sort of ibis – a large brown bird with long legs, a long curved beak and a loud voice. Hadadas roost in numbers among the trees in the leafier parts of Nairobi and their eponymous call is one of the more insistent elements of the dawn chorus in that part of the world, though they may be heard at any time of the day.
    • 2020 March 25, Steve Roberts, “Parly-vous?”, in Rail, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 68:
      Staying just under a mile from Gillingham station, I was up before the dawn chorus and parked at the station car park (£5.20 all day) in time for that 0456.
  3. (electromagnetism, radio) Radio interference sometimes experienced at sunrise.
    Synonym: chorus
    Coordinate term: auroral chorus
    • 1956 September 14, Harold E. Dinger, “The Dawn Chorus”, in Whistling Atmospherics (NRL Report; 4825), Washington, D.C.: Naval Research Laboratory, →OCLC, page 14:
      [T]he dawn chorus usually has a characteristic chirpy sound, but at times changes into a hiss not unlike tube noise. […] Several investigators, including the author, have at times noticed a tendency for the dawn chorus to change intensity for a short period immediately following some lightning strokes. This may indicate a change in propagation conditions due to the electromagnetic or ionization effect of the strokes.
    • 1960 January 9, Joseph H. Pope, “Effect of Latitude on Diurnal Maximum of ‘Dawn Chorus’”, in Nature: A Weekly Journal of Science, volume 185, number 4706, London: Macmillan and Co.; New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →OCLC, page 87, column 1:
      It is known that chorus, or ‘dawn chorus’, exhibits a pronounced diurnal variation in its occurrence and that different stations show different local times for the diurnal maxima. These maxima have been shown to be a function of geomagnetic latitude […]
    • 1964, D[avid] F[ranklin] Bleil, “Introductory Talk”, in D. F. Bleil, editor, Natural Electromagnetic Phenomena below 30 kc/s: Proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute Held in Bad Homburg, Germany, July 22 – August 2, 1963, New York, N.Y.: Plenum Press, →OCLC, page 2:
      The frequency spectrum (Fig. 1) includes micropulsations (Pt, Pc, LPc, PP, SIP, IPDP), gyromagnetic resonances, Schumann resonance, solar whistlers […], dawn chorus, hiss, whistlers and sferics.
    • 1965, Robert A. Helliwell, “History”, in Whistlers and Related Ionospheric Phenomena, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, published 2006, →ISBN, page 21:
      Both authors used data from other stations to show that the time of maximum dawn chorus activity increased with geomagnetic latitude. [G. McK.] Allcock argued that this characteristic could be related to the precipitation of positively charged solar particles that might produce the dawn chorus by exciting proton plasma oscillations in the outer ionosphere. These oscillations would then reach the earth in the whistler mode.
    • 2006, Nicolas Collins, “Circuit Sniffing: Using Radios and Coils to Eavesdrop on Hidden Electromagnetic Music”, in Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, New York, N.Y.; London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 12:
      Alvin Lucier's (US) Sferics (1980) is a recording ot electromagnetic "tweaks," "bonks," and "swishes" originating in the ionosphere, the result of self-immolating meteorites, the dawn chorus, and the Aurora Borealis.

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ “dawn chorus, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2023; “dawn chorus, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading[edit]

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