Anyone hear the Broadcasting House item about how to tell the difference between the songs of blackbird, thrush and mistle thrush? The blackbird received the Walther von Stolzing award. Sad to say, it's ages since since I saw or heard a mistle thrush in our garden.
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Mistle Thrushes are a daily sight and song here and we always have 1 or 2 pairs breeding nearby. Small groups in the winter with that racketing call overhead. Usually one of the first to start singing early in the year too, very distinctively shorter, differently pitched and more repetitive than a Blackbird. But how the song carries!
Song Thrushes, otherwise know as the Northern Nightingale, are, like House Sparrows, all but extinct here though, I'm lucky even to hear one singing in Spring and so far this year - none at all. Reversal from a few decades ago when to encounter Turdus Polaris - Missile Thrush was an exciting moment....Comment
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But (a pedant writes) the blackbird fails to find an After-song - its song peters out into an "unmusical ending". Lovely as far as it goes.....Originally posted by gradus View PostComment
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Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View Post
The great ornithologist DIM [Ian] Wallace referred to the song as the the "wild skirl" of the mistle thrush, which nicely describes it. The rattling call not totally unlike its first cousin the fieldfare.
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One of my daughters, walking near Buttermere (Lake District) heard cuckoos just this weekend. She sent an audio clip to prove it! It seems they are preferring the North. None heard in my Devon location for several years...though there's always some on the Isles of Scilly.And, admittedly en France, a few hundred kilometres south of England, the first cuckoos heard this yearComment
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The one time I have heard a cuckoo here, in the neighbouring woods, was 7 years ago. My next doors said it was the first time they had heard one in the district, in 25 years of living here.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostComment
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An epithet also accorded to the Blackcap (I have at least one pair here in France). Along with garden and willow warblers, my Scottish but 'n ben normally has a pair of song thrushes nesting in the jungle, err ... "garden" - and a pair of mistle thrushes nearby (the male jealously guards the berries on one of the sorbus trees against all comers: the poor bullfinches which I saw attempting an approach to the tree last autumn were swiftly seen off). There are usually cuckoos to be heard there, too, although nothing like as commonly as in the Outer Hebrides.Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostComment
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....Another report of a cuckoo - the first time I've heard one in 20 years of living in my present rural situation, Hertfordshire.
Used to hear them very regularly in North Kent 50 years or so ago.....Comment
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I was on the Isle of Iona for a few days last week with a group from one of our local schools. We were staying in the hostel on the North end of the island. On Friday morning I awoke a bit early and thought I'd have an early stroll before the mayhem of breakfast. It was a still morning, wee bit damp. The corncake was crexing, the skylarks were singing...really quite glorious. I thought I would wander over to Traigh Ban nam Manach - White Strand of the Monks - a beautiful beach on the north east facing Mull. As I approached I heard a cuckoo calling...first time I'd heard one in years. As I got towards the beach I realised that the call was carrying across the Sound of Iona from the Ross of Mull a couple of miles away. Took my breath away!Originally posted by Vespare View Post
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I'm fortunate to have a good selection of small birds, decorative or otherwise, in my garden, but the jewels are definitely the goldfinches. It's impossible to remain down when they are flitting around flashing their colours and making that wonderful joyous song. I can see why they were so popular as cagebirds.
Today I have quite a lot of starlings on the grass - family groups I would guess as there are some young ones squawking for food. Several of the adults have located a couple of ant nests and are indulging themselves. I remember some years ago a friend being very concerned at what she thought were sick birds on her lawn - lying around with wings at odd angles - that promptly flew away when she went out to investigate. Dustbathing is another behaviour that can cause concern - especially for novice chicken keepers - as the birds lie there apparently dazed.Comment
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Saw two Cuckoos out on Dartmoor today. Nearly managed to get a photo of one of them too, but I didn't quite have the reach with my lens. A couple of very smart male Whinchats and a less obtrusive female were the best of the rest. Loads of Willow Warblers singing too.Comment
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We were in Trieste last week and visited the castle high above the city, there we heard what I took to be nightingales singing their heads off in the trees but were they? I couldn't catch sight of them except for one that looked too big to be a nightingale and to my very imperfect eyes seemed too have a white chest, any suggestions as to what it might have been?Comment
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Petroc's OB from Ironbridge on Breakfast this morning had a delightful avian soundtrack - sadly I don't know which bird was responsible as, despite much effort and a lifetime's exposure, my birdsong identification skillls are virtually non-existent.Comment
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A few evenings ago, the Overground train I was travelling on pulled in to Hoxton station, and the doors opened to a chorus of blackbird song. The towers of various shapes crowd the City, just a short distance away, but of our song birds the blackbirds always seemed the most at home in the middle of London, even in my bomb site-strewn childhood; and sycamore trees are in abundance in the vicinity of Hoxton. Today I heard a number of song thrushes in the wild seminatural landscapes that line the Ravensbourne, not far from here.Comment
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... of course I love birds. To look at.
But in recent days...
Three o'clock in the morning it seems relentless. In the gardens between these west London terraces we have (to my untrained ears) - chattering magpies - alarm calls of blackbirds (there is a tree with a nest just outside the bedroom window) - the bicycle pump noise of a great tit (I think).
So LOUD!
I'm a forgiving sort of chap, but a week more of this....
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