This Europe: And for the Slovenian flycatcher - nul points

Online voting is under way to pick Europe's best songbird, or at least the best-sounding, from a list of 21 recordings posted on the Internet by national bird groups.

Estonia's Nature Fund and Ornithological Society dreamt up the contest to call attention to the plight of birds such as the blackcap of Cyprus, which is esteemed as much for its taste as its warble.

"The blackcap is better alive and singing than dead and pickled in a jar," the European Bird Song Contest stated in a news release that noted gourmets in Italy and France also like to eat the birds. Entrants have names as idiosyncratic as some of the groups that compete in the ever-popular Eurovision Song Contest: the red-breasted Slovenian flycatcher, the Icelandic golden plover, the Hungarian moustached warbler, which has a stripe under its beak.

The society figured it was free publicity and guessed right. About 10,000 visitors logged on to the site on Thursday, said the contest's spokesman Kristjan Adjoaan. Voting results were to be updated starting yesterday.

The winner will be announced at the Tallinn Zoo on 24 May, the day before the Eurovision Song Contest, which is being held in Estonia. In recent years, an estimated 200million TV viewers have tuned in to the final.

The 30-second bird song recordings are in MP3 format, require only standard audio software and vary in quality.

Some songs are nearly drowned out by background forest noises. While some birds have an appealing melody, others simply squawk or cluck. The Malta cory shearwater squeaks and clicks. Britain and Finland are both represented by the blackbird; Estonia and Luxembourg by nightingales.

To qualify, a bird has to be native to a country or migrate through it.

The contest can be found on the Internet at www.birdeurovision.org.