Song of the blackbird

By Emmanuel Williams

Bindle lives in a wood in the heart of the English countryside. Bindle is a blackbird. He has black feathers all over his body, a yellow-orange beak, and yellow circles around his eyes. His mate, Benna, has soft, dark brown feathers, a pale throat, a speckled tummy and a yellow-brown beak.

Bindle loves singing. His song is a series of tweets and chirrups and slides. If you were there in the wood listening to him you’d realize that the basic themes of his singing don’t change much, but he adds little trills and dips, goes lower or higher, faster or slower. Whether he’s perched on a high branch in a beech tree, or on top of a hawthorn bush, whether he’s singing as the sun sets or as dawn lightens the sky, his singing follows a pattern that repeats but is full of small changes. It’s beautiful. At least, I think so, and so do many English bird-lovers.  It’s the sound of it, the sweet clear flowing sound of it, like raindrops sliding over a golden flower. Benna‘s song is much simpler… she chirps and chirrups, often repeating the same note over and over again, sometimes dipping her brown tail with each note.

Many of the birds in the wood are singers. The thrush sings, and the little wren, the robin redbreast, the nightingale, the nuthatch. Other birds don’t really sing, they just call. The rook calls, and the crow, and the cuckoo.

Bindle is a songbird, and when he sings he’s communicating with other blackbirds. When he was a fledgling in the nest he learnt the songs sung by his parents… at first he memorized them, then he opened his fledgling beak and sang what his dad and mom sang.

Blackbirds recognize when blackbirds are singing, just as thrushes can tell when other thrushes are singing, and robins know when other robins are singing.

Singing is hard work. It takes a lot of energy. And it’s better if you sing loudly and clearly. Why? Songbirds sing to tell other birds:

This is my territory so you better go away, or I will attack you.
I am looking for a mate so we can build a nest and have babies. (Although when  Bindle sings in this way he’s just talking to Benna, not looking for a new mate).
I think there’s another reason why Bindle sings… I think he sings simply because he’s alive, looking for worms in damp leaves, or working with Benna to build a nest.

If your song is loud and clear then it tells other blackbirds or thrushes or robins that you’re strong, so your singing will drive away birds intruding on your territory and it will impress females so they will want to mate with you.

I think there’s a third reason why birds sing; it’s because they’re alive. It’s what they do, like flying, and building nests and raising their young and turning over dead leaves on the ground in search of worms.

The woods have been here a long time. In spring there’s a beautiful carpet of bluebells. Summers can get hot, but the trees are densely leaved, and soft white clouds often drift over and cast their cooling shadows. There are chestnuts and horse chestnuts and acorns. Young deer practice running and jumping, and young birds are learning to fly. Bindle’s kids have grown up and flown away, and he and Benna are cleaning and strengthening the nest for another brood. In autumn the beech leaves turn yellow and drift to the ground. As temperatures drop some of the birds – the swifts, swallows, martins and starlings – do something extraordinary. They migrate. They fly hundreds of miles across field and cities, mountains and oceans, to spend their winters in warmer lands. And then in the late winter, early spring, they fly all the way back. What an adventure! And we still don’t really know how they do it.

Another year passes. Bindle keeps foraging and eating, flying and mating, bringing up the kids, singing to the pale skies of one dawn after another. But there’s a change happening. The wood is less lush and green. Summers are hotter and hotter. Branches die and fall from their tree homes. The stream that runs through the wood is thinner and quieter. Its pools where its fish population live are shallow, and the few fish left are skinny. It is not good. Migratory birds come back from their long journeys to homes that are hot and dry. The deer, the squirrels, the rabbits and hares, the snakes and mice and badgers… they’re all having a hard time. Some leave the wood in search of better places to live, but everywhere is the same. Everywhere is hot and dry.

One February night there comes a great thunderstorm and wind. There’s been little rain or snow that winter so the wood is very dry. Birds are desperately clinging to branches as their tree homes rock in the storm. The air is full of dust and whirling leaves, and the loud alarm yells of jays and banging claps of thunder. Not far away lightning is flashing over the hills. Then a dazzling flash strikes a swaying treetop. It bursts into flame. The tree is a sudden column of fire. The fierce wind is roaring and gusting. Fire leaps from tree to tree like a huge hot hungry beast.

As they always do, the blackbirds are grouped together in a high tree for safe sleeping. When the wood bursts into flame they scream and fly up into the dark night space as fast as they can. They don’t know where they’re going. Survival is all that matters. Bindle is up there with the others. At first it’s hard to fly because the wind keeps swirling this way and that and it’s full of smoke, but Bindle keeps flapping his strong wings, and soon, as he flies away from the burning wood, the smoke grows less thick, the sparks less numerous, and the huge roaring less loud. He floats for a while on outstretched wings. It’s still deep night but he sees the glimmer of the lake that is fed by the stream that flows through the wood. He’s exhausted; one of his eyes is stinging from a spark, and his lungs are raw with smoke. He glides down, lands clumsily on the bank of the lake, flies up into a willow tree and perches on a branch. He’s alive.

Or at least his heart is beating in his chest, under his black feathers (some slightly scorched) and his slender bird bones. He can turn his head this way and that. He can hear ducks quacking on the lake, awakened from sleep by the thunder and wind-blown ripple waves and frightened birds fleeing the woodland fire. So yes, Bindle is alive.

But there’s a numb feeling down in his throat, behind his yellow beak. An emptiness.

Did Benna fly free? Are there other blackbirds here? Did his grown-up children escape the fiery storm? He opens his beak to sing, but no sound emerges. He tries again and again. No sound. No song. Just a choked gasp. If it’s as though the great fire storm came so suddenly that the birds in their panic escaped but left their songs behind. Like humans whose house is in the path of a great wild fire running out and jumping into their car to drive away and leaving behind laptops and family photos.

Dawn is breaking. Bindle catches a worm on the muddy bank of the lake, then flies back to his branch. He tries and tries to sing, without success.

Winter is nearly over. Soon it will be time for him and Benna to work together to build a strong safe nest, a bowl of grass and twigs and dry strong mud where she can lay 4 to 6 blue eggs with gray brown speckles and incubate them until they hatch. As the sun rises and the day brightens he sees two female blackbirds in the trees around him, but neither of them is Benna. Where is she? He can’t tell where he is. His voice has disappeared. And he’s exhausted from fighting his way out of the fiery smoky swirling air, so even though he wants to leap from the branch he’s perched on and look for her he can’t.

All the birds who escaped from the burning wood are silent. Even the calling birds like the rooks and crows, the jays and woodpeckers… even they are silent. And silent birds cannot attract mates, and mating time is coming. They can feel it in their bodies.

The next day Bindle flies back to the burnt wood that used to be his home, the last place where he could sing. He’s thinking that if he goes back he might be able to sing again. But the wood as he remembers it is gone. Black, gray and white ashes cover the ground. Trees are nothing but blackened columns or stumps, some still smoldering. The only place he recognizes is the slope down to the stream, although the earth is buried under ash, and the stream is clogged with ash and burnt branches, struggling to flow freely again. There’s nowhere for Bindle to perch so he tries singing as he flies, without success.

He flies back to his branch in the tree by the lake. The songs he used to sing were songs he learned from his father, songs he practiced and practiced as his feathers grew and his legs and feet and wings, songs he heard in his head, in his blackbird memory, songs that he sang as he scrambled from the nest with his brothers and sisters, that he sang as his parents fed him in his tree perch. There were longer melodies that could be heard through most of the wood, and shorter songs that didn’t travel far.

It’s very quiet in the trees growing by the lake and on the island out there in the middle of the water. Bindle, For the first time in his life, is gloomy. His proud black tail is droopy. His head’s droopy. His silent yellow beak is pointing at the ground. He eats enough to survive, because that’s his instinct. And most of the other birds that escaped from the fire are the same.

Now the swallows are back from their long migration travels. There they are, a whole flock of them, chirping and squeaking, flying around one another, swooping across the surface of the lake to catch insects. Their return signals that winter is over, that spring is here.  The cuckoos are looking for nests with eggs in them so they can push the eggs out and lay their own in the nest leaving them for the parents to raise cuckoo babies… but very few new nests have been built and those that have been are almost all empty of eggs.

Into this quiet, sad corner of the world comes another returning migratory bird. “Sedgie”. A small brown bird- a sedge warbler. After a long long journey across various countries, Sedgie returns to his home tree out on the island in the lake. It’s not just his home… there’s a small flock of male and female sedge warblers on the island or over in the trees where the stream enters the lake.

Different male birds have different ways of attracting females. Some strut around, opening their big colored tails. Some fly really fast over short distances. Sedge warblers are mimics. They show off by imitating the songs of other bird species. The more songs they mimic the more they impress females.

So there’s Sedgie on a branch out there on the island, recovering from his long journey. After a couple of days he starts singing the songs of birds he heard as he flew through Africa, Iran, Italy, and France…songs he stored in his memory. And other male sedge warblers are also mimicking songs they heard on their travels. They all followed different routes so the songs they mimic are different. It’s a kind of international music festival out there on the island and on the bank.

Now Sedgie starts mimicking songs he heard before he migrated, bird songs he heard being sung in the world before it burnt. A male thrush, flying across the lake, suddenly hears a song he recognizes… It’s his song! The song he used to sing! The song he hasn’t sung or even heard in his head since the great fire. The thrush is so surprised he nearly flies into the lake. He swoops over to the island, lands on a branch near Sedgie, and sings his song. Other male thrushes hear it, and fly over to the island.

Next Sedgie mimics blackbird songs. It has curves in it, and mellow chirpings, and a sweet golden tone. Bindle leaps into the air and flies over to the island. By now most of the male sedge warblers are mimicking songs they heard before they migrated last autumn, and  Bindle hears several  of them singing his songs. It’s almost as though he’s back in the nest as a fledgling learning to sing the songs his father sang. His songs are alive in him again. He takes a deep breath, opens his yellow beak and SINGS!

Bindle is a happy bird! He perches in a tree on the island and sings. He flies across the water to the tree that has become his home and sings. And the thrushes, the other blackbirds, the calling birds like the crows and rooks… they’ve all heard the sedge warblers singing their songs or calls so now they’re all singing or calling. It’s a happy time.

Bindle flies around the lake, singing loudly. Sometimes he perches in a tree or on a rock and listens. Birdsong all around him… but none of it is the sound of Benna singing. He flies  across fields where sheep are grazing. He sings to the hedges and the little copses. He perches in bushes and treetops and sings and sings, or stays silent and listens. He hears the songs of other birds; he hears the bleating of sheep, the drone of airliners crossing the sky, the sounds of cars in the country lanes and tractors plowing in the fields. He hears a dog barking, and a human voice. He looks across the fields and hedgerows at a whitish cottage with a thatched roof and a big garden full of flowers and bushes. In his blackbird mind there are now pictures of deep snow covering everything…. No food no food we are dying of hunger… and there’s a picture of a tray on an old tree stump, and there’s food on it… seeds, lots of seeds, and pieces of white flaky stuff, and there’s a small bare tree next to the place with food … it was a place that he and Benna found as they flew around in the icy winter air looking for something to eat. A place that saved them.

Bindle sings a short sweet song, takes off and flies across the fields towards the distant cottage. He flies over flocks of sheep and a herd of brown cows and a river …. he flies over a small country village with a green space and its middle where children are playing and laughing together… he flies over a narrow winding country road… he flies over the cottage rooftop to the big garden at its back.

And there’s the small tree where he and Benna used to perch. It’s now sprouting leaves and white blossom. And there’s the tray… and there are seeds.

And there, among the leaves and the blossom, is Benna. She’s perched on a thin branch gazing at a tall poplar tree at the end of the garden. Its small leaves are trembling together, and the high trunk is swaying. She looks the same as Brindle looked a few days ago, before his songs returned. She’s droopy. Usually she’s gazing this way and that as though there’s something happening over there…over there…. behind me…  But now she’s just looking at the poplar tree. There’s a dark shape on one of her brown wings, as though a flame scorched her as she flew away.

Bindle lands on the wooden fence on the edge of the garden. He breathes deep, opens his beak and SINGS. He sings as he’s never sung before.

Benna’s body shakes. She turns her head to look at him, and flutters her wings. Bindle flies across the garden to perch next to her. They flutter and dance together, and touch beaks. She looks as though she’s come back to life. Bindle sings and sings from the joy in his heart. Then he sees that she’s opening and closing her beak as she tries to sing but can’t.

Bindle perches next to Benna. He’s still and silent. He waits. He’s remembering nests they’ve built together, babies they’ve raised together, mornings they’ve woken up together in the leafy beech tree in the wood before the fire came. Benna. Benna’s song.He opens his beak. Chirp chirp chirp. Chirrup chirrup chirrup. The Benna song. As he sings it his tail moves up and down, as though he’s singing and dancing at the same time.

Benna opens her beak. She sings. She SINGS. Chirp chirp chirp chirrup chirrup chirrup….

Soon they’re flying away from the garden, over the fields with their flocks of sheep and herds of cows, on and on towards the lake, where the tree on the bank that’s Bindle’s new home awaits them. There they will build a new nest and a new life.

Chirrup chirrup chirrup chirp chirp warblewhistle warblewarble whistle updownupdown chirrup chirrup chirp chirp… warblewhistle warblewarble….