The singers began rehearsing for the main event as long ago as September. At first light, the murmur of traffic would be punctuated with tentative trills or cadences that expired almost as they began. The gaps between plaintive coos of the wood pigeon were filled with sotto voce snatches of song, making up for a lack of volume with notes of high piercing intensity. There is nothing that sings quite like a robin.
Robin song comes on strong at the end of the year, as if the bird were living up to its status as an emblem of the season. The simple scientific explanation is that male and female birds are re-establishing pair bonds and territorial rights.
All this week, one has begun its front of house show well before dawn, while another has launched forth in answer or opposition at the back. Yesterday, befuddled by sleep, I stood up and parted the curtains in a bid to see one of these birds, only to reel back at the soupy glare of a street light. Today, I stayed in bed, clamped my eyes shut, and listened.
The factory-like swish of cars spoke of overnight rain. A voice riding higher than a soprano easily subsumed this ambient roar into the background. For 20 minutes or more, the robin uttered a sequence of 200 or so phrases, in which melodies rose out of nothing, and swept through the whole gamut between hope and despair in three or four seconds. But there was never a conclusion. Quavering runs halted and fevered cascades cut short. I counted the lulls between – one-and-two-and – then the song resumed. I wondered if the bird had one tune in its head, simply oscillating between soundlessness and vocalisation; to my ears, it was as if a badly tuned radio was dipping in and out of a complete work.
For millennia, humans must have woken to robin song, in half-light without electricity, in silence without motorised vehicles. When there was no wind or rain, it would have been the only sound, a lone voice of affirmation at the dying of the year.
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