Sparrow Chirp

There’s something about rain that brings out the chirp in sparrows. I counted 12 of them, but the sound of this lot in the ivy and elder bushes sounds like a lot more. Why do sparrows all get up a chirp when it rains?
recorded from Maplin electret inserts on tree at 44.1kHz PCM to a PC via mic preamp. High-pass filtered from 440Hz at 12dB/octave to reduce traffic noise
A few days later I ran into a long linear sparrow colony in an old hedge by the side of Stanway burial ground. Living near the reservoir was obviously good for the health of this colony. It was a challenge to record as this was under the Heathrow take-off flight path at the time.



Sparrow colony at Stanway, under the Heathrow flight path