Country diary: My own personal blackbird serenade
Sandy, Bedfordshire: In my Covid fug, I sit in my garden as our resident male seems to recall spring with the clearest, softest, quietest song
Our poor, bedraggled, summer-long companion flumps down on the shed roof, as if in surrender. His beak gapes wide, but makes no sound, his wings and tail droop, feathers fanned like hands of poker cards. A hot flush. Sunning, it’s called, and this is his personal deckchair.
Europe has baked its blackbirds on a pie this year, the earth a hard, dry crust with no filling. As far back as showerless April, when the worms went low, we acted by administering fruit aid to the stricken birds. A pear a day saw our garden pair through three nests, but only a single baby fledged, and we never saw it once it left the nest.
Read the original article at The Guardian