A dunnock's song compared to that of the robin and the wren

Dunnock in a tree with a sky much like today's

In the last few days there have been the first tentative intimations of Spring. The sun is proudly out and you can feel its heat a bit more tangibly. Yesterday on my way to work I heard a greenfinch (I thought I had written a post about the greenfinch's song, but I haven't. I meant to) and today I went for a walk to the library and on the way down, I saw and heard a dunnock in a tree in someone's front garden, in the street opposite the churchyard. 

I stood and listened to it sing for as long as I could. I had forgotten about the dunnock. They're quite friendly and don't mind being seen.

They look like sparrows but with less brown and black and white, and more grey, maybe slightly bigger too. In fact the dunnock is sometimes called a hedge sparrow, but though it may look similar to a sparrow, it has a much better voice. Where the house sparrows just chirp away monosyllabically and monotone, the dunnock has a lyrical twittery song. It's fast and high and complicated, offered in little snatches that are often responded to by another dunnock in another tree.

The dunnock's song sounds very stereotypically birdsong-like, but it's distinctive; its quick twittered phrases sound almost regular, like a Mozart allegro, whereas the robin, for instance, is jazzy, syncopated, surprising, and the wren's song, also very stereotypically birdsong-like, is all repeated trills and tremolo, a bit like the jabbing bits of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' in its rhythmic structures, only faster and more violent.

Below are some brief recordings of the songs of the dunnock, robin and wren, so you can hear the differences. I made them myself. You won't be able to see the birds very well, if at all. Spring is coming. The birds will all start to sing, and knowing who the songs belong to makes it sound more like they are singing to you.

Dunnock

Robin

Wren