Birdsong today

Last night was really warm here, and for the first time this year all the windows were open all night.

Result ?

This morning I was woken by massed birdsong. There were more birds than I could possibly count, some calling, but most singing.

For me the glorious liquid bubbling of the blackbird is magical.

But amongst this morning's orchestra the call of the local finch cut through the rest. Two notes, repeated endlessly, with all the charm of a rusty hinge. The finches drive me nuts every year with their iterative lack of ambition.

But what they lack in melody they make up for with sheer energetic and enthusiastic determination. Finches may not have the most engaging song, but nobody can fault them for effort. And for some reason it does cut through the rest and stand out in the rising light.

Oddly, the singing this morning made me think of Larkin's gloomy Aubade, one of my all-time favourite poems. His "soundless dark" brought him no birdsong to disperse his anxieties, and to remind him that life continues vibrantly even after our own small demise.

It made me think, too, of my tutor at university, J H W G Liebeschuetz, a man of vast beaming geniality and warm, though puzzled, humanity. I think his air of slight and infinitely kind bewilderment must have come from wondering how his students could cope with having such small brains. He was a blackbird trying to teach finches.