It's never too early for spring song

Airedale, West Yorkshire A book from a century ago tells me when I might hear the 'spring' songs of each common songbird

The robin has uncorked its spring song. This one - a male, I suspect, giving it some welly in the upper reaches of a bare horse chestnut - is the loudest, the fullest, I've heard so far.

David Lack, the author of the landmark 1943 study The Life of the Robin, wrote that its autumn song was "thinner and less rich" than its spring reprise. In autumn, robins are more likely to mutter, to essay half-hearted impersonations of other birds, to engage in circling, absent-minded vocalisations known as sub-song, like a man whistling idly to himself as he walks in the woods.