After a flurry of snow at Easter, Spring has arrived in a rush. Our resident female blackbird is singing her head off at dawn and dusk perched on the next door gable and the aubretia is forming a purple carpet on the flower bed.
Surely not even a nightingale can rival a full throated blackbird in full song. Ours' even mimics other birds in her morning song.
The English journalist and poet William Henley (1849-1903) wrote:
"The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
The lark's is a clarion call,
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
But I love him best of all.
For his song is all of the joy of life,
And we in the mad, spring weather,
We two have listened till he sang
Our hearts and lips together.
The daffodils were out early in London this year and there was a flurry of snow at Easter (which was the earliest since 1918) but my neighbour's magnolia is now in full bloom, the cherry trees which line the nearby side streets are swarming with blossom and the intense blue grape hyacinths nod and sway along the garden borders.
Welcome to Spring!
You can listen to British garden birds singing at our our web link on the right.
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