The Sound of Silence

This is the tenth of the mid-weekly posts sent to all those on the Birds list. If birds aren’t your thing, and all you want is the weekly Six Things emails, you can unsubscribe from these posts by going to the manage your subscription page. But do have a read anyway – you might find that birds are, after all, your thing. And if they are especially your thing, you can upgrade for £4 a month to access the second half of these emails.

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EVENT KLAXON

On 21st March (that’s tomorrow if you’re getting this today, today if you’re getting it tomorrow, and yesterday if you’re ok I’ll stop) I’ll be giving an online talk to the Central London RSPB group. The subject is one that’s long fascinated me: Birdsong and Music. It’s free for members, but non-members can join for a small donation. Tickets here.

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There’s a blackbird singing outside as I write this. It is the most welcome sound, another little nudge towards spring. Sure, it’s accompanied by the low thrum of south London traffic, the distant roar of a circling plane and the sharp buzz of an angle grinder, but that’s life in the city for you.

And now a coal tit has joined in – pi-tchew pi-tchew – and a further-away robin. Rattling magpie, a wood pigeon’s wing clap as it emerges in haste from the depths of a tree. Parakeet squawks, blue tit pipes, door slams.

A child cries in the distance. Perhaps it hates the sound of the angle grinder.

WREN, SHOUTING.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.

It’s all too easy to be unaware of the soundscape. Especially in winter, when windows are tightly shut, the outside world kept at bay. But just now the air is warm and benign, the window is open, and I can hear those sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Far from hurting, they nourish the soul and I drink them in with unseemly greed. And even when everything quietens – angle grinder done for the day, blackbird on a tea break, wren exhausted from the shouting – there remain stirrings. A chip here, a rustle there, the briefest tinkle of a goldfinch, so far distant I almost think I imagined it.

The very stuff of life. Hold it close.

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You know how sometimes you’re sitting there minding your own business, perhaps nursing a pint of something frothy, and you find yourself in the middle of a fight and fearing for your safety?

Well, that happened to me in the park the other day, but without the pint.

And, to be entirely clear, I didn’t exactly fear for my safety, what with the protagonists each being no larger than nine centimetres long.

Not that you’d have known it from the ferocity of the altercation.

In the blue corner:

– a goldcrest: tiny, furious

Photo by Francis C Franklin

In the red corner:

– a firecrest: equally tiny, equally furious

Photo by Alexis Lours

They’re cousins, these birds. Goldcrests are common enough, although easily missed (what with the size and everything). A firecrest sighting, though, is altogether rarer. Not ‘grab the binoculars and drive 300 miles no matter what other commitments you have’ rare (not that I do that anyway, as I wrote here), but definitely ‘bloody hell, I think that’s a firecrest – IT IS!’

Europe’s smallest birds, these two. And if you’re wondering how to tell them apart, it’s all about the eyes. A goldcrest’s eye is large and unencumbered by anything other than an open, slightly disappointed look; the firecrest’s has a black stripe and white above, giving it a sleeker appearance and an air of quiet cunning.

A close encounter with any bird is special. This was something else. Here it is. They really were that close.

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