A Song Out of Season: The Song Thrush and a Warming World
By Julia Evans,World-Today-News.com
The dawn arrived with a startling clarity, and a sound to match. A voice, powerful and pure, resonated through the bedroom window – Did-uu… did-uu… did-uu, chwit, chwit chwit. it was a song thrush, a welcome, and frankly unexpected, visitor to the soundscape this side of christmas. A fleeting thought crossed my mind that it was singing at the “wrong” time of year, a notion we’ll return to shortly.
For those attuned to the rhythms of the British countryside, the order of the spring chorus is well-known. The mistle thrush typically leads, followed by the song thrush, with the blackbird joining in a month later. However, when judging purely on vocal artistry, that order often reverses. Yet, in terms of sheer public affection, the song thrush reigns supreme.
Its popularity is undoubtedly fueled by its readily recognizable song, built around those beautifully recurrent phrases (listen here). These repeating motifs make it easy to learn, and our familiarity breeds fondness. Interestingly,the Victorian poet Robert Browning saw something deeper in these repetitions,interpreting them not as simplicity,but as wisdom. In his poem, Home-Thoughts, From abroad, he wrote of the thrush singing “each song twice over, / Lest you should think he never could recapture / The first fine careless rapture!”
Don’t mistake repetition for a lack of complexity. A single song thrush possesses a repertoire of around 130 distinct songs, often incorporating remarkable mimicry – the calls of lapwings, snipe, redshank, oystercatcher, and curlew woven into its melody. But above all, the song thrush’s performance is imbued with joy. It’s a declaration, echoing the optimistic philosophy of Dr. Pangloss: this is the best of all times, in the best of all possible worlds, and the thrush believes it with unwavering conviction.
But can even the happiest of sounds carry a note of warning? Could this early song be a symptom of a world
