SUNDAY is International Dawn Chorus Day, and Cumbria will welcome it in with a Birds and Breakfast event.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Duddon Valley Local Support Group will be hosting the morning event, which coincides with similar projects around the world.

Bird lovers from Aarhus to Wildcat Canyon will be joining in this year, rising early to hear birds greet the sunrise and appreciate how much wild birds contribute to our lives.

International Dawn Chorus Day 2016 will be the biggest and most interactive ever, with participants worldwide streaming audio feeds of the chorus, using the hashtag #idcd on Twitter to share their experiences of the event and upload images of the array of birds they encounter.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust has teamed up with SoundCamp, who have organised a series of outdoor listening events relayed live by audio streamers around the globe. Over the course of one earth day a live radio composition is made by relaying sounds in a sequence that moves west with the dawn, returning to the start at Stave Hill Ecological Park in London as the sun is coming up on the Sunday.

You can listen to bird song from Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s wildlife garden at Plumgarths, just outside Kendal, online at any time of day via www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/dawn-chorus-sounds

Reserves officer Andrew Walter worked with SoundCamp to set up the microphone. He said: "The dawn chorus at this time of year, when birds are competing for territories or trying to find a mate, is a wonderful sound. As we’re not all prepared or able to get up at 5am to get outside ourselves, broadcasting the dawn chorus from Cumbria live online means anyone can listen to these wonderful sounds from home.

"The technical nature of the broadcast means this International Dawn Chorus Day we’ve set the microphone at outside offices in Kendal, where we've got a wildlife garden well-visited by birds. But in the future we'd really like to broadcast from one of our nature reserves and try to pick up some more unusual species on the microphone."

The Wildlife Trusts organises International Dawn Chorus Day, which has grown from a small gathering in the 1980s in Birmingham, to an international celebration of nature’s daily miracle.

This Sunday's Birds and Breakfast event runs from 6am to 10.30am, meeting at Broughton Square. 

The event is free but donations to the Trust are appreciated. Breakfast will be available at the Square Café, and accompanied children under 16 are welcome, though dogs are not permitted.