Barring an early morning thunderstorm or the eternally irritating sound of air conditioners and fans, most summer mornings begin according to a well-rehearsed script. At just before 4 a.m., it’s still dark out and night continues to rule. But with each encroaching minute ”“ each second, in fact ”“ the sky begins to lighten by infinitesimal degrees until somewhere, in some slightly brighter niche where the new day has barely begun to insinuate itself, a bird notices and starts to sing.

At this time of year, robins are often the last troubadours to perform at day’s end and the first to greet the day, their tremulous staccato warbles plying the morning silence as if to say, “another night is ended, and another day begins.” On mistier mornings, the mourning doves take center stage until the rest of the avian community awakens. Then, one by one, as the horizon exhibits sure signs of our part of the continent greeting the sun, other winged melodeons join in until it becomes difficult to distinguish one from the other. And unlike the jarring sound of an orchestra tuning its various instruments, this apparent disarray of birdsong seems to have some sense to it, some composition. It is a pleasing melodic melange to one who awakens, as my mother used to put it, “with the birds.”

Occasionally, one bird hogs the stage and goes on and on until I murmur from my pillow, “OK, someone else sing something,” and then it’s as if some other species heard me and responds. And then, if I happened to toss some stale bread out the night before, the crows swoop in and take over, stilling the more delicate voices until they’re satiated and once again move on to more productive regions. Then, it starts all over again, until about midmorning, when most birds seem to take a break or a sort of intermission between acts.

But before that, before the rest of the world in this immediate area is awake, the chorus that has been ongoing since the first tweeter of the day emitted its first plaintive tweets sometimes stops with no warning. Then, all is suddenly and abruptly still, leading me to wonder if some larger bird of prey appeared to strike fear in the hearts of the more diminutive songsters. Or did they spy something feline and threatening from below and just instinctively piped down until it moved on?

Some birds sing only one song, while others are capable of many. So in the early morning hours, it’s easy to identify the robin’s song. But once other feathered vocalists get into the act, it becomes harder to separate one from the other. And when the gray catbird, who likes to confound listeners with its pretty substantial list of tunes gets into the act, well, then it’s all just one big symphony, and one of which I never grow weary.

Just exactly how and why do birds sing in the first place? I’ve been listening to them for years, without, I realized recently, knowing much about it other than the fact that I love it. And it seems that the dawn chorus, as it is called, is a particular stumper for ornithologists. Birds, primarily males, sing to attract mates and to delineate their territories. Part of their repertoire may include also informing others of their species about the availability of food in a particular area. Some birds react aggressively to certain bird songs, mostly because they see others as a threat to their space. Leave it to nature to devise a way to communicate that, to birds, means lots of different things, but to us is just plain music.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@hotmail.com.