The Wonder Of Birdsong

A wonder. A delight. So unexpected

A wonder. A delight. So unexpected. For it had not been heard for years, and there was even the thought that the bird might have gone from the area for ever, as it is said to have done in other parts. It was a song thrush which, from about 7.45 am on last Friday until after nine o'clock poured forth its wonderful song, almost without cease. Now, a few years ago, it was regular practice to be out in the early morning with a tape recorder, but, perhaps as the suburbs extended, it was thought, the song diminished and, for a couple of years anyway, the place seemed to be without this lovely songster. David Cabot in his Irish Birds tells us that the song is remarkable - "loud, clear and vigorous, consisting of a succession of simple phrases, many repeated two or three times. Under ordinary conditions, the song will carry for four hundred metres." And, he says, that in October/November many Scottish and northern English bred birds migrate to Ireland. Welcome! if that's what you are.

For, in general it seems their numbers are decreasing in this particular part of south Dublin. However, the survey done by BirdWatch Ireland seemed to point out that it was doing reasonably in contrast to the "continuing slide in the rankings in the UK", when it was recorded in 53 per cent of gardens. Here in the 1997/98 winter, it was found in 73 per cent. An article in a recent Times of London had it that in the list of ten most common feeding birds, the song thrush was in tenth place during the 1970s but vanished from the first ten in the 1990s. Here in the past winter it only made twelfth place, but the British list doesn't give the ranking below ten. Anyway when BirdWatch Ireland talks of a "continuous slide" in England, we can take it that they know their facts.

To remind you, our top ten are: Blackbird, blue tit, robin, chaffinch, greenfinch, great tit, magpie, coal tit, house sparrow and dunnock. Britain's list for the 1990s is: blue tit, blackbird, robin, great tit, greenfinch, chaffinch, dunnock, house sparrow, starling, and collared dove. No birds should be unwelcome in a garden. Even the magpie is not all that villainous. And how handsome. But the heron: a real enemy of those with ornamental fish in a pool or pond. One man had his favourites well-protected, he thought, but the heron cut through the mesh and made off with the fish. As to birdsong, you remember the bleakness brought to mind in The Lady of Shallot when "The sedge is withered from the lake/And no birds sing." Y