On my bucket list for the next week or two is to haul myself off to some decent songbird habitat and listen to a nice dawn chorus.

That's because where I live in North Everett it's too neat and tidy for many songbirds. The reason why might be summed up by a man I overheard in the garden section of the hardware store the other day as he asked the clerk for a product "that will kill everything except my lawn", with no sense of irony whatsoever. Way to go Yard Steward!

So it's a bit quiet here at Dawn; I call it the Yawn Chorus. Kind of a snoozer.

Now that's maybe a bit too snarky, because we do have lots of nice Robins toodling, a few Sparrows etc. In just the last few years, one of our most prominent singers, the House Finch has dropped in numbers quite a bit. Right around my immediate block or two it's been really quiet - most of what I hear seems to be emanating from the funky greenbelt above the Everett waterfront a few blocks away. It's pretty quiet overall for songbirds, more so all the time it seems to me.

In my mind the best Dawn Chorus I ever heard was in 1970 on Memorial Day weekend camped in a woodsy corner of Lake Chelan State Park. All the camping hoards were sleeping off their beer, hotdog and marshmellow overdoses and it was just the birds and me, with my nice fresh 15 year old ears. What an incredible chorus that was - it just seemed to go on and on, getting better and better! Amazing! Even better was that I didn't know what a lot of the birds were - mysteries! I like that. Lying in my little pup tent with a big smile on my face.

Of course lots of things have happened to my ears over the years - they don't work quite like they used to. But I can hear plenty still even though my wife insists that I'm "deaf as a post" ( 'wash a dish ? - I thought you said watch a fish!) ( I am a fish watcher too). I just need to be somewhere with a greater variety of birds at dawn. I'm thinking the big ravines out toward Mukilteo, or maybe Lords Hill Park out Snohomish way.

Heard a good Dawn chorus lately?

Jeff Gibson
yawning in
Everett Wa