Naturalist will join other presenters for new weekday 90-second show at 5.58am highlighting songs of 265 UK birds

Sir David Attenborough will attempt to reclaim tweeting for the birds in a year-long Radio 4 series, Tweet of the Day, featuring the songs of 265 birds around Britain.

Like the dawn chorus, each 90-second episode will air at the beginning of the day, just before the Today programme, starting with the cuckoo in the first programme on 6 May.

Along with the birdsong, the series will tell the story of the bird through science, social history, culture, literature and music.

Along with species with which listeners may already be familiar, such as the blackbird, nightingale and swift, it will also feature lesser-known species such as the storm petrel, a sea bird that frequents rocky beaches and has a song described by one ornithologist as "like a fairy being sick".

There will also be birds spotted only by the most devoted of twitchers such as the black-browed albatross, a Falklands resident that once turned up on the northern tip of Shetland.

Attenborough, who will present the first month's worth of programmes with other presenters to include Springwatch's Chris Packham, said: "I'm delighted to be involved in this series.

"I've seen some of the most incredible animals on my travels around the world, but Tweet of the Day is a nice reminder of the teeming world of birds on my doorstep. As a non-ornithologist, I might even learn a little too."

The series, which is being made by the BBC's natural history unit, will air every weekday at 5.58am on Radio 4. Many of the songs will come from the BBC's archive, along with new recordings, including the "barks" made by great crested grebes as part of their mating ritual.

The series will become a permanent part of the BBC website and will also be available as a podcast – tweeted out, naturally, with the hashtag #r4tweet.

BBC natural history producer Brett Westwood, who will write the entire series, had to choose the 265 birds from the official bird list of 596 species in Britain, of which 286 are recorded as rare.

"Picking the birds was interesting – we tried to concentrate on the ones people have a reasonable chance of seeing, or have an interesting story," said Westwood.

"People react to birdsong in an atavistic way. It touches something deep within our core, and we react to it. I was listening to the wood pigeon and the blackbird in my garden today, and what a poorer place it would be without them.

"A lot of people think that, even if they don't know what they are listening to. We hope to add to people's vocabulary of birds."

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.