On these early spring mornings, before I switch on my bedside radio and hear about the latest violence in Iraq or mayhem on the highway, I lie in bed and listen to the exuberant concert performed live just outside my window.

Birders call it the "dawn chorus," the seemingly joyful tweeting, twittering and chirping of songbirds that begins with the first hint of daylight and continues until well after sunrise — a true marvel of nature.

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Among the avian contributors to the dawn chorus that fills springtime backyards are the Carolina chickadee. Most of the songsters are males looking for mates.

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Our yards and woods, of course, are full of tweeting and chirping throughout much of the day. But most of what we hear from the birds during that time is "small talk," a sort of social chatter compared with the magnificent dawn chorus.

Between now and mid-June, a symphony of more than 20 different songbirds will serenade us at the start of each day. In my yard in Decatur, a typical performance goes something like this: On a tulip poplar limb, an American robin sings its long, repetitive song: "Cheerily? Cheer up. Cheerily." In the dogwood, a tufted titmouse loudly utters what sounds like "peter, peter, peter." A Carolina chickadee sings "fee-bay, fee-bay." Then, from the pine tree, a bright red cardinal proclaims a loud "cheer, cheer, cheer; purty, purty, purty." From the woods in the back yard comes the ringing "teakettle, teakettle, teakettle" of a Carolina wren. And from somewhere may come the flute-like trill — "e o-lay, e o-lay" — of the wood thrush, one of Georgia's sweetest songsters.

By the time the sun peeks over the horizon, red-eyed vireos, house wrens, bluebirds, goldfinches, ovenbirds, song sparrows, eastern wood peewees, catbirds, eastern phoebes and others may have joined the choir.

You can hear the dawn chorus in the city as well as in the country. Each species has its unique song (although the mockingbird readily imitates other species' tunes).

Why do the songbirds sing so vigorously on a spring morning? For one thing, nearly all of them are males trying to attract females and at the same time warn other males to stay out of their territories.

On a worrisome note, a report last week in the British magazine New Scientist said that noise pollution could be driving birds out of towns and cities. Scientists at the University of Sheffield in England and at other institutions say the constant din of vehicles, factories, chain saws, leaf blowers, lawn mowers and other machines is drowning out the dawn chorus. The racket, they say, could lead to a decline in bird populations.

Golf course birding

I was watching the Masters tournament on TV last weekend when I found myself paying more attention to the birds singing in the background than to the golf itself.

Jason Baumgardner of Roswell, who was at the tournament in Augusta, confirmed that the birds "were quite vocal" during the event. While trying to keep up with the action on the links, he saw or heard "many pine warblers, brown-headed nuthatches, crows, a few chipping sparrows, a few very vocal mockingbirds, one or two bluebirds [and] several red-tailed hawks," he said on Georgia birders' chat line.

Folks across the country also were intrigued by Augusta National's singing birds. Sylvia Wright of Davis, Calif., said she was puzzled over the identify of one of them as she watched the tournament on TV. She asked for help on the chat line last week. The bird's call, she said, sounded like a playground swing, suspended by chains from a metal bar, swinging back and forth — creak, creak, creak. "It's probably one of your common birds [in Georgia], but it sounds exotic out here," she said.

Fred Land of Decatur ventured a guess as to the bird's identity. "Makes me think of a red-winged blackbird, since a rusty hinge has been the best comparison I've known for its call," he said.

Bloomings

We members of the Georgia Botanical Society found one of the state's most beautiful and spectacular wildflowers, the white-flowered atamasco lily, in massive bloom last weekend in the Oconee National Forest just south of Monticello. From Ga. 83, which runs through the forest, I also could see acres of the blooming plants on the forest floor — a sea of white flowers. Clusters of them also grew along the roadside.

The atamasco lily is predominantly a Southern species. In Georgia, it's most common in the Piedmont and coastal plain regions. Sitting on a naked stalk about a foot high, the flower is quite striking with its three satin-white sepals and petals.

In the sky

The Lyrid meteor shower reaches peak activity April 21, with about 15 meteors per hour. Look to the northeast from about 2 a.m. until dawn, says Fernbank Science Center David Dundee.

The moon will be full April 20. The Cherokee people called April's full moon "Flower Moon." Venus is very low in the west just after sunset. Mars is in the southwest just after dark. Jupiter rises out of the east about an hour after midnight and will appear near the moon April 26. Saturn is high in the south as it gets dark.