A country with more than 1350 bird species, India is a birding hotspot with tremendous potential for monitoring and documenting bird activity and behaviour. Although Dawn Chorus Day is internationally observed on the first Sunday of May, Sudipto Roy, an avid birder and member of BWS, proposed the idea of observing Dawn Chorus India on the first Sunday of April, which is the ideal time for these feathered creatures to transform their plumage, and sing of Spring “in full-throated ease”. In 2023, the event burgeoned into a state level activity and in 2024 it culminated into a nationwide event in which birders participated from across India and shared their recordings. A Whatsapp group was created by Kaustav to manage and co-ordinate with birders across India and share the guidelines to be followed while recording birdsongs and sharing their recordings in group. The heatmap created for this purpose showed that hundreds of birders were participating across the country At first light from Delhi in the North to Tamil Nadu in the South, from Rajasthan in the West to Mizoram in the East.Birders used different kinds of equipment from simple mobile phones to high-end recording devices, used different apps such as Parrot and Merlin, and covered diverse areas such as forests, wetlands, urban areas and mountainous regions. People participated from their backyards as well as from reserve forests and wildlife sanctuaries, which magnified the scope of the event.

In sum, the 2024 Dawn Chorus Day was immensely successful, as evident in the keen participation of the birders in the Zoom meeting held at 7.30 am to share the harmonious cacophony of nature during springtime recorded across the country. Since eBird is also now involved in observing Dawn Chorus Day, participants were requested to make 15-minute checklists on eBird and upload their media along with their list of birds observed.

Globally, this has now evolved into a Citizen Science and Art Project. Various institutions and organizations got involved in this global phenomenon to record birdsongs and monitor changes based on the intensity and variety of the recordings over time.

What is the point of all this, you ask? Well, several, according to wildlife enthusiasts, scientists, professional and amateur birders. As the BWS Secretary, Sujan Chatterjee, pointed out on the first Dawn Chorus Day, “it was truly astounding to see birders only focusing on birdsong rather than on bird photography. As a society primarily focused on visual cultures, merely listening to birdsongs and trying to identify birds based on their calls is a wondrous thing in itself. Many participants expressed joy at having identified an unexpected call from a bird they had never seen in their backyard. Such little joys are worth living for, isn’t it?” Moreover, there are definite scientific consequences of observing Dawn Chorus Day each year: it helps monitor the avian health of a particular region by documenting the change in the intensity and diversity of the birdsong. As Priyam Chattopadhay remarked during the Zoom meeting, the same place in Joka wetlands where they had recorded birdsong in the previous year had undergone a noticeable decline in terms of bird activity due to clearing of lands for construction activity. Dawn chorus therefore can be a useful tool for monitoring the rise or decline of bird population in a specific region over a certain period of time.