Cliffe Castle, Keighley, 2025

4th May 2025

We have had lots of lovely comments about this morning's awesome nature connected event.

Fifteen people came to Cliffe Castle Keighley just before twilight to welcome in the dawn this morning. The event was organised with the help of Cliffe Castle Support Group and was funded by Keighley and Ilkley community chest.

We used the picnic spot that looks out over the Aire Valley again this year and once again we were taking part in Reveille, an international broadcast of the Dawn Chorus from around the globe.

Nicola Storr brought her easy to follow drawing guides, and we had a beautiful accordion piece by local musician Phil Moody welcoming the sunrise over the valley.

Our stream page has a recording of the sounds we heard as part of that event.

Sun rise was 5:26am, hot drinks cake and donuts were served, and we chatted about the experience, and looked at some of the drawings that had been made.

We hung around until about 6am before heading home.

A fabulous dawn chorus.

Climate Impact

We have tried to make this a low-carbon event by design, targetting a local audience, for a local event.

In the end I think nearly everyone arrived by car, but my guess is that no-one really came from all that far away. I also travelled by car, bringing two people in total.

Sound

We began to broadcast before the official start of twilight (04:44), as we arrived at the site. The official sunrise time was 05:26, and we recorded for about 20 minutes beyond that.

The audio below was recorded by Phil Moody.