Sweet thrill of the thrush’s song

THESE dark evenings, against the grey sky, rooks tour in their thousands and squawk and caw and make metallic noises that overwhelm all other sound but for the lambent, repetitive notes of a blackbird and the full-throated variations of a song thrush carolling from the top of a tree.

Even the rooks can’t drown out the thrush. And it is never repetitive, never the same full phrases repeated, always a twiddle or a sally at the end, or a variation in mid-flow.

Thrushes are surely the princes amongst the songsters; the nightingale alone, (and we do not have nightingales here), can compete. A Scottish lyric goes, “I have heard the mavis singing/ Its love song to the dawn...” and, yes, the mavis, the black prince of song, is indeed a bird of formidable voice, but for composition, falls short of his speckled cousin.