Cock A Doodle Dawn

Roosters are often shown to crow at daybreak. In fact, almost all works set on a farm have this happening. a rooster's crowing itself is what brings the sun up.

Related to Wolves Always Howl at the Moon, which is when wolves howl at dusk

If a bird is used to indicate the time of day, it's usually a Cuckoo Clock Gag.

Advertising

* This trope is why a rooster is used as a symbol for insomnia for Ambien (prescription sleep aid) commercials.
* It's also part of the reason it's the symbol of cornflakes, with the slogan "Wake up to Kellogg's Cornflakes!" (The other part is that a Welsh-speaking friend of the Kelloggs told them that "ceiliog" was Welsh for rooster.)
* A NyQuil commercial has a guy in bed with a cold as we hear crowing in the background. His wife suggests he take some NyQuil, saying it'll help him sleep like he did before the rooster went blind. It's then revealed that said rooster is crowing in the middle of the night.

Anime and Manga

* In *Doctor Slump*, this is done by a *pig*.
* In *Pani Poni Dash!*, Serizawa would dress as a rooster, climb on top of a pole, and announce the time of day.
* In *Pokémon: The Series*, a Dodrio can be seen atop Oak's laboratory at daybreak making a three time crowing.

Asian Animation

* In episode 1 of *Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons*, a rooster calls each time the sun rises. Since alien interference is unintentionally making the days and nights go faster, the rooster ends up signalling the sunrise so many times that it gives up. Twice.

Films - Animation

* Played for laughs in *Chicken Run*. Fowler the rooster is seen at sun rise at the beginning of a scene, where he loudly shouts in English, "COCKADOODLEDOO!... What what!"
* In *Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs*, a ratbird crows, heralding the beginning of an ice cream snow day.
* *Home on the Range* plays with this trope; Reggie, the rooster on Patch of Heaven, is fast asleep when we first see him, but one of his sons (still a tiny chick) lets out a mighty crow, startling him off his perch.
* Played for Laughs in *James and the Giant Peach*, when the peach breaks loose from the tree and begins rolling toward the ocean, there's a cut to a rooster on a fence, with the peach rolling up over the hillside in the background. The rooster starts to crow, only to get run over by the giant fruit.
* *The Nightmare Before Christmas*: A rooster crows with the rising sun in Halloween Town. A completely skeletal rooster who doesn't even have the chords to crow with.
* *Rock-A-Doodle* involves the sun not rising at all unless the rooster crows.
* A rooster is heard to crow right before daybreak in *Yellow Submarine*, which is odd since the meanies seem to have turned every other living creature to stone.

Films - Live Action

Parodied in *Babe*, where a duck crows to avoid being eaten. This really annoys not only the actual rooster, who sees it as *his* job but can never wake up early enough to beat the duck, but also the farmers, who opt to buy an alarm clock.

*Muppets from Space*: Camilla crows at the dawn of the Muppet Boarding House.

Live Action TV

* The opening sequence to *The Big Comfy Couch* begins with a rooster crowing.
* Mentioned in *Friends*, Chandler and Joey's pet chick, now a full grown rooster, apparently has a habit of waking up the whole apartment building at dawn, though only Monica and Rachel know that they own it.
* A rooster crow is heard in *LazyTown* when the sun comes up.
* In *The Office*, Dwight hints that a rooster wakes him up every morning. Not surprising since he lives on a farm.
* *Clarkson's Farm*: In season two, Jeremy buys roosters for the chicken coop on his farm. They end up crowing at every sunrise and waking him up... which quickly irritates him due to sunrise happening at 4 in the morning.

Video Games

* In *Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg*, the sun doesn't rise until a rooster crows.
* Multiple *The Legend of Zelda* games, to indicate that it's officially daytime, and paired with wolves howling at dusk.
* In *Stardew Valley*, a rooster crows to signal the start of every new day in spring, summer and fall. If it doesn't, then it means it's going to rain.
* In the Nintendo DS game for Zoobles, while the Zooble is sleeping, the sun appears in a transition from night (where the top screen shows a night sky with a moon) to day, complete with an off-screen rooster crowing.

Western Animation

* *Garfield and Friends*: In the *U.S. Acres* segments, Roy Rooster has a paying job to wake up everyone in the morning, but he oversleeps often so his timing is very inaccurate.
* One episode of *The Angry Beavers* spoofed this by having a *bear* crow. At the end of the episode, Dagget asks, "Norbert, what is *wrong* with that bear?"
* One episode of *Dora the Explorer* involves Dora and Boots helping a rooster crow to "wake up the sun"
* There's a rooster who crows at dawn in *The Fairly OddParents!*, which explodes.
* One episode of *Handy Manny* involves a rooster crowing and waking one of Manny's friends up too early.
* In *Lilo & Stitch: The Series*, a rooster's crow is often heard whenever a scene cuts to the outside shot of the Pelekais' house. Sure, Kauaʻi has a lot of chickens living on the island.
* Whenever daybreak is shown in *Little Princess*, a rooster is seen sitting in a tree and crowing.
* In the *My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic* episode "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Applejack remembers when she left the farm for the big city and is surprised to find that city folk have no concept of a rooster. Homesick, she watches the sun rise the next morning and sadly cock-a-doodle-doos to herself.
* A rooster is heard crowing offscreen in *Peppa Pig* whenever daybreak is shown.
* A rooster crows in the Opening Sequence of *Shaun the Sheep* and the reason why it's this trope is because the intro involves the farmer getting ready in the morning. In the Christmas Episode *The Flight Before Christmas*, On Christmas Eve, a turkey throws snowballs at him and takes his place, and on Christmas morning, the turkey puts the rooster back in place after seeing the farmer approaching with an axe.
* At the end of *The Skeleton Dance*, a rooster crowing signals that the skeletons have to stop dancing and get back in their graves.
* In one of Smurfette's Imagine Spots from *The Smurfs (1981)* cartoon special "Smurfily Ever After", Farmer does the honors of crowing at dawn to wake up his wife when Smurfette imagines herself being married to him.
* On *SpongeBob SquarePants*, the crowing is done by scallops.
* In the classic Tex Avery MGM cartoon *Cock a Doodle Dog*, Spike the Bulldog has his sleep interrupted by a rooster with a crow. After various backfiring attempts to shut the bird up, Spike winds up crowing loudly by the rooster's house after the rooster goes to bed.
* Warner Bros. cartoons where this is affected is "Porky's Poultry Plant" and "Each Dawn I Crow." In "Chicken Jitters," a rooster flaps its wings and inhales deeply, ready to crow, but instead he yells "Hey, fellas! Wake up!!!"
* In the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon "Crowing Pains", Henery Hawk says that rooster crow at dawn and proposes that Sylvester, Barnyard Dawg and Foghorn wait until then to see who crows, so Henery can figure out which one of them is really a chicken.
* In *Cow and Chicken*, Cow threatens to tell their parents that Chicken is the one who crows every morning at sunrise unless he does what she asks.
* *Jelly Jamm*: At the end of "Jammbo's Many Worlds", when Bello decides he'll stay to play with Ongo for a little while longer, the sun starts to rise and the morning is heralded by a rooster crowing.
* Parodied on *Family Guy*: in a cutaway, a trio of roosters crow except the disabled rooster who utters "Good night, everybody".