Thrushy

The Blackcap has suddenly become camera shy. The day after I recorded him singing in the brambles, he suddenly stopped. Only the odd few seconds of half volume song have trickled from the back hedge since. My attention was instead drawn to a Mistle Thrush who flew up into the Ash tree on Monday evening and sang insistently for a few minutes before dashing up the road and alighting on a TV aerial fr another performance. I hadn't been quick enough, so when I heard him again this evening, I rushed out to try to capture something. He was up in the Poplar across the road, and it was surprisingly hard to pin him down, especially since I'd left my bins indoors, but eventually- there he was singing gleefully in the sunlight, the spots drifting down his chest like the sprays of Poplar flowers. On a couple of occasions his song suddenly sped up, as though impersonating a whitethroat - so different from the mournful winter melancholy usually associated with this soberly dressed bird.