The repetitive musical phrases of the song thrush have inspired many over the centuries. No other bird speaks to us quite so directly, its serenade conjuring memories of old family tales.
A Personal Connection Through Birdsong
I wake early on these bright summer mornings. Now that the birds in my garden have mostly fallen silent, only one is still serenading me: the aptly named song thrush. Its measured, deliberate repetitions – which this particular bird has provided without a break since the turn of the year – are unmistakable.
Whenever I hear a song thrush, I’m taken back in time. First, to my childhood, when the first sign of spring was thrushes singing from the roofs of our suburban housing estate as I walked home from school in the dim light of a February afternoon.
Echoes of a Family Story
Then, still further, to another early childhood memory: a story my grandmother used to tell me about her father, Edgar Snow. On summer evenings before the first world war, while he walked home from work, he would hear a bird that seemed to speak directly to him: “Snowy, Snowy – pay the rent, pay the rent.” It was only many years later, long after my grandmother had died, that I realised the identity of that songster. No other bird speaks to us quite so directly, nor so insistently.
Now, more than a century on, whenever I hear a song thrush I feel a special connection with the great-grandfather I never knew, through the clear, pure sound that greets me as I start each new day.
