Hark! What sweet noise is that on this fair spring morning? Birdsong if I'm not mistaken. Strange - the dawn chorus round here usually consists of the first number 226 of the day, chugging on its way to Ealing Broadway, and the skip trucks banging over the speed bumps outside my house.
Oh, it's on the radio. We're in bird enthusiast Stephen Moss's garden, in the Somerset Levels, and this is Radio 4's Guide to Garden Birds. That's the blackbird then - a beautiful warble that Moss describes as "fruity". You know what, I think it is fruit. I'm thinking berries... Birders, they're almost as good as their birds. Why no mention of Paul McCartney's song I wonder?
And this one is even better, with its beautiful repeated phrasing "Did he do it? Did he do it? Did he do it? He did it, he did it, he did." You can put your own words in, as long as it's to the same rhythm. It's the song thrush of course, voted the best of all by in an important poll.
Now a rattle, just like one of those wooden ones cloth capped men used to take to football matches in the olden days? An old-fashioned Chelsea fan perhaps, returning very late from the Cup Final? Actually it's a mistle thrush - bigger, and less friendly looking than the song thrush they say. They do their football rattle as they fly away.
Inspired, I venture out of my back door, to put my new skills into practice. And there, dead on cue, a warble, undeniably fruity. Before it's drowned out by the next 226, I skilfully identify and correctly identify it - as a blackbird. Actually I kind of knew that one already, from the Beatles song. But next week we're getting more advanced. And I'll be there.
