Tweet Of The Day

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the Florida scrub jay. Less than 6,000 Florida scrub jays exist in the wild, yet these are some of the most intelligent creatures in the world. Long term research has revealed an extraordinary intelligence. If other jays are around, a bird will only hide its food when the other bird is out of sight. It will even choose a quieter medium, and rather than pebbles for example, to further avoid revealing its hidden larder to sharp-eared competitors.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the North American red-winged blackbird. The arrival of spring in the USA is heralded by the unmistakable "conk-ra-lee" call of the red-winged blackbird. The male blackbirds, who are un-related to the European blackbird, flutter their red and yellow wing-patches like regimental badges to announce their territories. The numbers of Red-winged blackbirds has increased spectacularly in the mid 20th century as more land was converted to growing crops on which the birds feed. Today at a winter roost hundreds of thousands, even millions of birds darken the skies over the plantations or marshes in which they will spend the night - a loud and unforgettable spectacle.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents a seabird with a worldwide distribution, the brown noddy. Expert fliers, the brown noddy is seldom seen near land and is highly pelagic, wandering extensively in warm tropical waters where it searches for small fish and squid which are captured by hover-dipping and contact-dipping. However in the Galapagos Islands, brown noddies have learnt to sit on the heads of brown pelicans hoping to steal fish from their open gular pouches; a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft).

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the Central Asian bar-headed goose. The bar-headed goose is a high-flier of the bird world. Bar-headed geese are migrants which undertake one of the most arduous journeys of any bird. They breed mainly in the remote lakes of the Tibetan Plateau, but overwinter on the plains of northern India. But to get there, they have to cross the World's highest mountain range, the Himalayas, a height of over 20,000 feet.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the Australian magpie. These large pibald birds with pickaxe bills reminded early settlers of the more familiar European magpie, but in fact they are not crows at all. Australian magpies have melodious voices which can range over four octaves in a chorus of squeaks, yodels and whistles. Pairs or larger groups of magpies take part in a behaviour known as carolling, a harmony of rich fluting calls which marks their territories and helps to cement relationships between the birds.Producer : Andrew Dawes

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the South American hoatzin. Moving clumsily through riverside trees the funky Mohican head crested hoatzin looks like it has been assembled by a committee. Hoatzin's eat large quantities of leaves and fruit, and to cope with this diet have a highly specialised digestive system more like that of cattle, which gives them an alternative name, 'stink-bird'.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. Sir David Attenborough presents the blue bird of paradise. The crow sized blue birds of paradise provide a spectacular flash of blue in the Papua New Guinea rainforests yet it is the males dazzling courtship performance which grabs a female's attention. Tipping forward from his perch he hangs upside down fluffing out and shimmering his gauzy breast feathers. As if this weren't enough, as the female approaches, he increases the frequency of his calls to produce a hypnotic mechanical buzzing, more like the song of a giant cicada than any bird.Producer : Andrew Dawes

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.David Attenborough presents the story of the pied flycatcher. The pied flycatcher is the voice of western woods, as much a part of the scenery as lichen-covered branches, mossy boulders and tumbling streams. When they arrive here in spring from Africa the black and white males, which are slightly smaller than a house sparrow, take up territories in the woodland and sing their lilting arpeggios from the tree canopy.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.David Attenborough presents the story of the whimbrel. Whimbrels are sometimes known as 'seven whistlers' from the number of notes in their call and in parts of the English midlands these sounds in the darkness gave rise to a folk tale about the six birds of fate which flew around the heavens seeking the seventh. When they were all reunited, went the story, the world would end. Mercifully, it wasn't true but it was our ancestor's way of interpreting the mystery of nocturnal migration.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.David Attenborough presents the story of the reed bunting. The reed bunting makes up for its lack of musicality with striking good looks. Male birds have jet black heads and a white moustache and look stunning on a spring day as they sit on shrubs or sway on reed stems, flicking their tales nervously and chanting a simple refrain.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.David Attenborough introduces the final recording marking International Dawn Chorus day. The urban dawn chorus was recorded by Chris Watson in Whitechapel, London as part of a project to enable the children of the Royal London Children's Hospital to hear the wildlife sounds on their doorstep. Birds featured include the robin, blackbird, great tit and house sparrow.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs. David Attenborough presents the third of four recordings marking Dawn Chorus Day: a dawn chorus from the marshes of North Warren in Suffolk. On clear moonlit nights the chorus can be an almost continuous chatter and includes reed and sedge warblers, reed bunting and even a bittern, with its booming, foghorn-like call.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.David Attenborough presents the second of four recordings marking the dawn chorus, this time the heather moors of Allendale in Northumberland. Songs featured are that of the curlew, skylark, golden plover and redshank.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs. David Attenborough presents a dawn chorus recorded in Rutland Water. The outpouring of song is so dense that it is almost impossible to single out individual species but includes blackbirds, song thrushes, robins and newly-arrived migrants like garden warblers.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Kate Humble presents the stone curlew. Stone curlews belong to a family known as 'thick-knees' but their country name of 'goggle-eyed plover' suits them better. Their huge staring yellow eyes serve them well at night when they're most active. By day, they lie up on sparse grassland or heath where their streaky brown-and-white plumage camouflages them superbly.

Kate Humble presents the fulmar, a familiar cliff nesting seabird during the breeding season. For the rest of the year fulmar can be found over the cold subarctic northern oceans of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Coming to land only to breed, these tubenose birds despite resembling other seabirds, are closely related to petrels and albatrosses.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Kate Humble presents the red-throated diver. The eerie wails of a red-throated diver were supposed to foretell rain. In Shetland the red-throated diver is called the "rain goose" but anyone who knows the island knows that rain is never far away. Like all divers, red-throats are handsome birds with sharp bills, perfect for catching fish. In summer they have a rusty throat patch and zebra-stripes on the back of their neck but in winter they're mainly pearly grey and white.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Kate Humble presents the goosander. Goosanders are handsome ducks and belong to a group known as 'sawbills' because their long slender bills are lined with backward pointing 'teeth', for gripping slippery fish. Underwater they're as agile as otters, chasing fish in raging currents or nosing for them under riverbanks.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Kate Humble presents the ruddy duck. Ruddy ducks are natives of North America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s several ruddy ducks escaped from the Wildfowl Trust's collection at Slimbridge and within 30 years they had become established breeding birds in the UK. Some even migrated to Spain where they mated with a very rare threatened relative, the white-headed duck. Many ornithologists believed that the resulting hybrids threatened to undermine years of conservation work in Spain, so after taking scientific advice, the UK government set out to eradicate the ruddy duck. This action has reduced our population to a handful so your best chance of hearing the courtship display is by visiting a wildfowl collection.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Kate Humble presents the capercaillie. The bizarre knife-grinding, cork-popping display of the male capercaillie is one of the strangest sounds produced by any bird. The name 'Capercaillie' is derived from the Gaelic for 'horse of the woods', owing to the cantering sound, which is the start of their extraordinary mating display. These are the largest grouse in the world and in the UK they live only in ancient Caledonian pine forests.