Madeleine Finlay
speaker
2,527 appearances
37 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 5d ago
Madeleine Finlay’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 37 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 8.
Appearances
This episode was produced by Ellie Sands.
It was sound designed by Joel Cox.
And the executive producer is Ellie Burey.
We'll be back on Tuesday.
See you then.
That's the dawn chorus, taken by Science Weekly producer Ellie Sands in Bristol earlier this year.
When spring awakens, so do the birds.
As the sun approaches the horizon in the early hours of the morning, birds begin to sing and call to each other, creating a cacophony of sound.
Except in a lot of places today, the dawn chorus isn't very loud at all anymore.
Take the UK.
Since the 1970s, we've lost 73 million birds.
Species like the turtle dove, the nightingale and the cuckoo have suffered precipitous declines.
It's hard to remember or imagine what it was like before.
In fact, it's so difficult, the phenomenon has a name, shifting baseline syndrome.
The sights and sounds of a degraded natural world feel normal to us, and we forget how it used to be.
So, based on data provided by the British Trust for Ornithology, we decided to shift our baselines back and rebuild the dawn chorus.
this is what you might have heard 20 years ago if you'd opened your bedroom window at 4.30am.
Back in 1986.
And here's what could have been waking you up before the alarm clock in 1966.
What with habitat loss, pesticides, disease, cats and now the climate crisis, there are fewer birds around us than ever before.
Showing 1241–1260 of 2,527 · page 63 of 127
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