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Treetop jazzer

10 February 2015 by Simon Barnes 13 Comments

I was walking down the road to my house when I heard an oystercatcher. They nest on the marshland here and in a few weeks they’ll be making their usual cheery racket. Never very calm birds, always piping away in the great excitement of being alive.

This oystercatcher was piping from the top of a tall tree, which is kind of unusual for a wading bird. Because of course, it wasn’t an oystercatcher at all: it was a song thrush pretending to be one.

It was the second time I had heard a song thrush this year: the first a good two weeks back, yelling rhythmic defiance to cold weather of the closing day. This oystercatcher was perhaps a little half-hearted, but good to hear all the same. The year is turning.

Song thrushes like to improvise. They are not exact and pedantic mimics like the starlings on my roof that do such a good curlew imitation. A song thrush works on repetition: one phrase repeated two, three or four times, and then a change.

They will often take a sound from their surrounding world and bring it into the repertoire. Nuthatch is a great favourite in places with good stands of mature trees: out my way they reflect the watery landscape they survey as they sing. They sing the world they know.

And as they do so they make each borrowed element their own: not a string of witless bits of mimicry but a coherent whole, each individual sound adapted and made personal, so that sometimes the original source gets a little lost. A touch of jazz in these improvisations: they will bring in sirens, telephones, reversing tractors and human whistles into their compositions as well as sounds from the natural world.

It seems that they do this with conscious wit: deliberately expanding their repertoire as well as the power of their song, to make themselves more attractive to potential mates and more forbidding to potential rivals.

All that’s good biology. But it’s not the whole story: facts never can be. Human musicians win power and prestige with their excellence: but they can’t do that unless they first love the music for itself and lose themselves inside it.

And I bet it’s just the same for the song thrush warming up his oystercatcher riff for the greatest gig of them all. The one called spring.

 

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Posted in Wildblog

Comments

  1. Michael John Clark says

    10 February 2015 at 8:47 pm

    They used to nest in our garden up until the nineties but I am lucky if I catch a glimpse of one locally now. It is my favourite songbird.

    Reply
  2. Malcolm Cragg says

    10 February 2015 at 10:54 pm

    The birds are sensing spring,when will the first butterfly come out?

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      13 February 2015 at 1:33 pm

      No sign of anything yet in drafty Norfolk, but i’m looking forward to that first hectic sprint of a sex crazed male orange tip.

      Reply
  3. Mary Fanning says

    11 February 2015 at 9:21 am

    Simon, your writings are food for the soul, thought provoking and inspirational. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      13 February 2015 at 1:33 pm

      Thanks for a lovely message.

      Reply
  4. Otto says

    11 February 2015 at 10:33 am

    Lovely poetic stuff Simon. God, we miss your Times column. I have written to the editor to that effect but he chose not to reply. I’ll be listening out for some Geordie in my local song thrushes ……..

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      13 February 2015 at 1:34 pm

      Absolutely, birds have local accents alright.

      Reply
    • Beverley Ring says

      14 February 2015 at 5:05 pm

      I miss the Times column too – Simon’s irreplaceable! Thank goodness for these little snippets.

      Reply
      • Simon Barnes says

        22 February 2015 at 3:39 pm

        Thanks for that, i’ll keep putting them out.

        Reply
  5. Andy Lloyd Williams says

    11 February 2015 at 11:11 am

    I had no idea song thrushes mimic like that. They must have a sense of humour too!

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      13 February 2015 at 1:34 pm

      I’d love to think so – certainly often seems that way.

      Reply
  6. Gillian Matthews says

    14 February 2015 at 1:28 pm

    Just found your blog! Obviously out of the loop but was puzzled by your absence from the Saturday Times and have really missed your evocative and informative writing! Hoorah for blogging…..!

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      22 February 2015 at 3:39 pm

      Welcome back then, I aim to keep blogging away in this space, so please stay in touch.

      Reply

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