The bird song that beats all others

Damien Enright describes his summer garden’s residents

WE have a song thrush that sings its heart out any old time of day and always in the evenings. As I write, the mid-May weather is glorious, and it sings from a branch high up in a beech tree with the sky blue behind it and a gentle breeze stirring the new green leaves, shining and trembling in the sun.

Beneath the beeches are swathes of flowers, primroses in full bloom along the stream bank, bluebells and violets, white wild garlic in swathes, meadow buttercups and red campion, sanicle and stitchwort.