I woke today to nature's alarm clock. At around 6am I was in that semi-awake state of mind when we're conscious but not yet fully awake. As I lay there enveloped in the eiderdown I could hear a blackbird calling from outside, that clear fluty call only blackbirds can make; sharp, precise and somehow able to convey the beauty of nature more than many other more unusual songsters. After the curlew, whose bubbling call transports me back to childhood days in Northumberland, the blackbird is my all time favourite songster. Many a time I have sat in the gathering dusk listening to its call, to be replaced as the light fades and they head to roost with a Tik Tik Tik social call which always transports me to winter evenings, smoke rising vertically from a chimney as a frost develops while I listen. At the back of the house is a song thrush and whilst I like their call too, blackbirds are a semi-quaver above in my book. So clear was the call I thought he must be right next to the open bedroom window. Peering out though past the rain sodden newly unfurled leaves of the silver birch I could vaguely make out a shadow on a neighbour's chimney. Sure enough it was he, a full 100 yards away, projecting his prefect pitch into my bedroom slumbers. What an exceptional way to begin a May Day, a time to celebrate fertility and the zest for life. Best of all as I write this at 8.30am, he is still singing, still mesmerising me and still giving me a thrill.
So here he is in all his rain soaked feathers with a touch of leuticicm. He needs a proper celebration I feel so here is a low resolution 2 minute video of his perfect alarm call (with apologies for my camerawork, I was still half asleep at 6.30, was shooting through a window and had this on a x100 hand held zoom).
Go on my son, give it large!!
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