The best healing is found in nature and nature’s sounds can bring profound healing.

Do you like music? If you like to rise after the sun does, then enrich your life by setting your alarm for the pre-dawn, even if that means around 5:00 am in the spring and summer and your treat will be to hear a whole bunch of symphonies played at the same time – arising from the miniature voice boxes of our small yet powerful friends, the birds. Their sweet, enthusiastic and vibrant dawn chorus is a most soul-cheering way to start your morning. The chorus lasts several hours so you might still catch some of it if you rise a little later.

If you are at Tofino Hummingbird Cottage you will probably not need an alarm as the dawn chorus is loud enough to sing you awake.

Songbirds sing as part of their breeding process, so the most complete version of the chorus is heard in Spring, when all of them join in. The reason they sing so early in the morning is that it is still too dark for them to find food and too early for predators to see them, so it matters not how loudly they sing.

As you tumble out of bed onto the deck of Tofino Hummingbird Cottage in the chilly air before the sun’s rise, the first ‘bugle’ of the chorus you will hear is the robin, singing its piercing, long and short-noted song. In the next half hour it will be joined by many species. Song sparrows belt out a particularly cheery many-noted melody and if you manage to catch sight of one, observe how much effort it puts into its song; head thrown back, trembling throat and vibrating body. The ratio of large volume to small body size is astonishing and delightful.

Make your day! Get up to hear the dawn chorus.