Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

5.43am. 2 minutes before my alarm. I’m awake and smiling. This is a very unusual combination of events. Waking usually only happens after the snooze button has taken a pounding. Smiling usually only happens after my daily 6am meditation.

I remember this day every year: the day the dawn chorus wakes me. Winter’s discomfort becomes so familiar I forget to expect its end, or even to look forward to this day: the day that marks the start of spring.

Blackbirds are always first to rise. They’re smart and quick and can make do with very little light. They start to hunt for breakfast before the smaller more nervous ones, who wait until the sun gives them more light to travel by: first robin, then sparrows and dunnocks, and last the finches. We’ve been watching it all during our own breakfast over the past weeks, as the sky melts from navy, to royal, to powder blue.

Now it’s light by breakfast time and a lady Blackbird is setting up home in the Pyrocantha. She’s been considering it for a while, checking out the dimensions of various nooks, and the likelihood of cat invasions. A wide straw bowl on the first day, then springy dew-laden clumps of moss on the second, and now the smooth mud lining is being trampled down. In the blackbird world, plastering is not a man’s job. Mr Blackbird is a vigilant sentinel on the garage roof, occasionally offering inspections or consultations.

Blackbirds are flourishing in Britain. They are extremely common, but I am still thrilled every time I see or hear one. To me they are heralds of good news.

You can hear some good recordings of blackbird songs at Freesound.iua.upf.edu and BBC.co.uk

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under britain, nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.