A few years back, in my day job, I was editor-in-chief of our industry blog. My duties included herding the cats, I mean authors, and if I failed at that, write blog entries myself. We published weekly, and I had to have something in my back pocket a bunch of times, and one of the things I liked to fall back on was a format I called “random ramblings”. I’d pick a topic, always risk or insurance related (since that was the industry), and wrote a bunch of bullets points about it. Things I found interesting, and that I hoped it would interest our readers.
Long-winded introduction, I know, for what I’m going to start today, in random intervals. Not a bullet list of random ramblings. Instead, from time to time, I’m going to take one popular/urban/whatever trope, and have a look at it. For now, I plan to have them all be around country life, meaning animals and such. But you never know.
So, roosters. Here’s our rooster Jean-Claude[1] with two of his ladies:

Like most roosters, he crows. Loud, and regularly. Research seems to be not very clear on why roosters crow, whether it’s to impress the ladies, his perceived rivals, to warn of danger [2], or just for the fun of it. Or all of the above. He definitely does some question-and-answer crowing with another rooster from the other side of the valley, for the rest, who knows?
But one thing you tend to read in stories or elsewhere it that roosters start crowing at dawn, to greet the day or whatever. Is this true?
Nope. Definitely not. JC starts crowing at around 3:30 to 4 in the morning, i.e. currently well before dawn. Then there’s a few of his sons around right now. Here’s one:

He’s going to be a good-looking fellow, and is mightily practicing his crow. It still sounds more like a rubber ducky, but at least he’s trying. And so is his brother. Both also from 3:30 onward.
I’m not complaining. People move to into rural areas and go to court over rural noises. My wife and I, we don’t even notice. Quite the opposite: when I wake up in the early morning, and DON’T hear crowing, I get worried that something might have happened. But otherwise, it’s part of the scenery and doesn’t disturb our sleep, like, at all.
But it definitely doesn’t start at dawn, and the boys are not greeting the day.
Notes:
[1] In case you have read my story “Herbert” from 99 Fleeting Fantasies, yes, that Jean-Claude.
[2] When JC warns of danger, it sounds very different from his crowing. Over time, you do get to understand a bit of chickenish.