Sunday 23 June 2024

'Its notes are deep & sweet'

 I've been deriving a good deal of innocent pleasure from an 'app' I recently acquired that identifies bird song. You point it in the direction of the bird, touch the Record button for a few seconds (ten or so usually does the job), wait another few seconds, and back will come the name of the bird whose song you've recorded. On my walk the other day, I was crossing a field when I heard a bird giving its all in a wonderfully musical, free-ranging improvisation. Some kind of warbler, for sure – but which of that numerous tribe? I employed the app, and soon had the answer – it was a Blackcap, a bird whose song Gilbert White aptly described as 'full, sweet, deep, loud and wild'. In his journal for May 19th, 1770, he notes: 'Black-cap sings sweetly, but rather inwardly: it is a songster of the first rate.  Its notes are deep & sweet.  Called in Norfolk the mock nightingale [and more widely, today, the northern nightingale].' A songster of the first rate, indeed...
  The next day, in the local park, I (or rather my app) identified another Blackcap, and today, a little farther afield, a Common Whitethroat (a species first differentiated from the Lesser Whitethroat by Gilbert White). Its chattering song took me back to summer days walking on the Surrey downs and hills – one of the few things I miss from my previous life 'down south', especially in the butterfly season. 

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