Guardian readers have responded to a recent letter about a musically inclined blackbird, sharing their own encounters with avian virtuosos. Frances Holloway of Harlesden, London, recalls a blackbird that whistled the last movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. She used to push her husband in a wheelchair along the road each morning, and the bird’s song was a great joy. Her husband has since died, the blackbird is gone, and the tree where it sang has been chopped down, but the memory endures whenever she hears the Beethoven concerto.
Blackbirds and scales
Anna Crabtree of Lewes, East Sussex, describes a blackbird that visited her Yorkshire back yard years ago, singing the first four notes of a major scale. The following year it returned and sang the next three notes, and the year after it completed the scale. She wonders if this was random or connected to her husband, a musician working from home.
Pop culture and typewriters
Ana Beard of Barnet, London, reports that her partner repeatedly whistled the Godfather theme with windows open. A blackbird soon began to warble those distinctive first five notes throughout the summer. Leslie Wilson of Reading recalls a blackbird that reproduced the carriage return “ping” of her manual typewriter. Michael Haslam of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, notes that a local blackbird keeps insisting it’s a Barbie girl.
