I heard my mockingbird for the first time yesterday (not early). I'm glad it has returned; it's such fun to listen to it.

We have a jay that comes, sits on the deck railing and "asks" for peanuts evey morning. That call is pretty-lilting and melodious-the harsh "caw" he then uses to let the other 5 neighborhood bluejays know that I just tossed out the day's ration is not so lovely.
Dido, I can not identify your culprit-but I can sympathize-a few years ago, we had a demented robin throwing himself against our bedroom window at dawn, over and over again, because he saw his reflection and thought it was another robin poaching on his territory. Talk about a bone-crushing thud. It was very sick-making. We finally hung a picture of an owl's face cut from a nature magazine in the window and he went away-as did several of our neighbors. An unexpected bonus......;-)

Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Robert Frost

I don't know what bird that could be but I'm sure someone will come up with an answer.

A few years ago I visited a friend in her lovely home in the Wye valley. I thought it would be so peaceful and wonderful. Well, it was wonderful, but peaceful...not so much. Not only were the birds literally deafening in the early morning, the sheep baaed and baaed ALL night. LOTS of sheep. I'm not used to so many sheep, although they are nice creatures. Didn't know they were so noisy!

Ugh--the "cheeseburger" bird perches right outside my bedroom window during the spring and summer, singing his jingle at the crack of dawn. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeeeeeseburger.

Dido, it sounds as though you might have partridges disturbing your sleep. Do you live near open country/farm land? The best way to deal with them is to stick them under a layer of pastry with a few onions and veggie and cook gently for an hour.

I spent all of my childhood near the banks of the River Avon in Stratford and one of the most common birds was the swan.
Beautiful to look at from a safe distance, but they are dangerous and fearsomely strong. A jab from their beak can do serious damage and they can break an arm with their powerful wings.
As they are a mute species not much is heard from them besides angry hissing.
Even their swan-song is no more than legend.

The Wild Swans At Cool - William Butler Yeats.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

swans and snow geese are fierce! A flock of wild snow geese took up residence on a friend's pond, and, when her black lab (about 2 years old) took exception, they surrounded him, forced him into deep water and drowned him.

Upon reading this thread, my first thought was of Emily Dickinson's poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

Dido, apparently your bird doesn't sound all that hopeful. I guess Ms. Dickinson had more of that "aged," and "blast-beruffled" (I always loved that description) thrush" in mind when she penned her words.

Siobhan,

I love Robert Frost and I didn't know that one. Thank you for posting it.
And Froniga, Emily Dickinson is also one of my favourite poets. Apparently so simple, with her 4-line stanzas. By the way, I don't know whether the bird is hopeful or not - it just sounds sort of automatic and expressionless. I quoted the Hardy because I've had him and his poetry on my mind, recently so I press the 'bird' stop and out comes a handy Hardy quote.

Vee, so how do I lure this partridge (if that's what it be) out of its (we haven't got a pear) tree.... into the palm of my hand and persuade it into a pie-dish? I haven't got an air-rifle (or it would have been a gonner long ago! Also gonners, would be the magpies....)

There's a lovely Elizabethan madrigal called 'The Silver Swan' and I've always loved the words as well as the music. Mute swans as you know, are supposed to sing only once - immediately before they die:

The silver swan who living had no note,
When death approached, unlocked her silent throat.

Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last and sang no more:

'Farewell all life, Oh death come close mine eyes -
More geese now live than swans - More fools than wise.'

(can't remember who wrote it - Dowland, perhaps?)

And still on swans but on a lighter note:

Swans sing before they die. 'Twere no bad thing,
Should certain persons die before they sing!
(can't remember who wrote that either)

I had a friend (now dead) who once, in a fit of drunken, violent confidence, faced down a swan. He got down to its level at the side of the river (Thames), pushed his face up to its beak, stared it straight in the eyes and hissed 'I hate you, bloody swan! I hate you- hate you -' etc. And the swan hissed and flapped, and we stood on the bank, praying and calling 'don't, John! It'll have you!'... until finally the swans turned, slid slowly down the bank and into the water and floated off as if it really couldn't have cared less. I think it realised that John's will was stronger than its own. But when he sobered up, he couldn't remember a thing and he went white and trembling when we told him what he had done.

Dido

Dido, The Silent Swan was written in 1612 by Orlando Gibbons (had to look it up).
I looked around on Youtube for examples of this madrigal but could only find ones sung by big choirs and this was originally written for five voices.
The version below is beautiful and despite the lack of singers you can hear the different parts coming through.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Silver Swan

Swans can be mean. I have a family member who was attacked by one. And, as many of you know, geese can be fierce. Because of this, in France, they are often used instead of guard dogs, in the country.

I am a poor sleeper and read in the wee hours of the morning. I am lulled by the lovely sound of a "roo-cookoo" repeatedly, very soft. I suspect it is the pair of multicolored pigeons I've seen roosting in my trees. I would love to know what they are saying to each other. I also have a lovely owl who hoots around 3 a.m. As I live surrounded by trees, near a wood, I get to see the occasion golden eagle, egrets, Canada geese, and of course many songbirds.

The bird poems seem to have been already taken by others here. But in the spirit of Spring, will you accept the following offering?

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Lovliest of trees, the cherry now,
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands along the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my three score years and ten
Twenty will not come again
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Now maybe it would be good to wake up to this - and maybe not............................

Here is a link that might be useful: Australian Lyrebird

Kath, that is really amazing! Lucky it isn't April 1st or I'd think it was a hoax. Are these birds wide-spread throughout Australia or becoming an 'endangered species'?
We used to have a blackbird in the garden that could imitate the telephone, much to everyone's annoyance, but the lyrebird could be bred and sold to households for use as a burglar alarm.

Mary, you mentioned owls you hear in your area. We have a resident Little (or Screech) Owl that makes a horrible noise and have lost the Barn Owl that used to live in our decaying coach-house and disliked the noise of three small children playing outside his bedroom window.
You will be familiar with Shakespeare's
"Then nightly sings the staring owl 'To-whit
Tu-who!' a merry note . . ." from Love's Labour's Lost
Apparently what WS didn't realise was the it is the male owl that goes "Tu-wit" to be answered by the female with a ""Tu-who".
Below, sibling rivalry in the owl's nest.

Here is a link that might be useful: Owls

This is a must (just an extract - and then my favourite Hopkins

Percy Bysshe Shelley
To a Skylark
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wertÂ
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delightÂ

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring Â
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

Edward Thomas's poetry is so beautiful, and deceptively simple. I love THAW which gives us both birds and the approaching spring:

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Thanks, everyone, for adding to this list of lovely poems. I won't put up the whole of Keats's ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, who

'singest of Summer in full-throated ease'

or Wordsworth's CUCKOO -

'Oh cuckoo, shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?'

and the albatross from Coleridge's THE ANCIENT MARINER - that would take up some space to post here!

As would Poe's RAVEN:

'Take thy beak from out my heart!
'Take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'

I'm sorry to say I couldn't do much with the Australian Lyre Bird link; and Vee, I couldn't get more than a few bars to play of The Silver Swan on your link. Pity, because it sounded just wonderful and makes me think I'll go and buy a CD of Old English Madrigals. I think my computer is old and tired like me.

Dido

Cant leave without this lovely poem

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And WinterÂs dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The landÂs sharp features seemed to be
The CenturyÂs corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited ;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

We have much trouble with jackdaws. They like nothing better than to nest in our many chimney pots and during the Spring several little-used fireplaces are quite full of sticks, bits of paper, even plant labels . . . in fact were we to provide them with a heap of nutty slack and a box of matches the fires could be laid and lit each morning.
Young and foolish birds occasionally fall down inside the chimneys and soot-covered, fly about the rooms in a blind panic and with little bowel control. On return from our last summer holiday we found a very dead bird in the spare bedroom and downstairs a broken window where his brother had flown to freedom straight through the glass.
You all probably know the poem below . . .too long to print on this page.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Jackdaw of Rheims

Astrokath, the Australian lyrebird is amazing. I hope it is not an endangered species but the fact that it can imitate chainsaws is ominous. Is its habitat being destroyed?
Having recently finished reading Bryson's In a Sunburned Country for the second time, I am completely taken with the mysteries of Australia, but the lyrebird wasn't mentioned in the book. What other wonders is Australia hiding from the rest of the world?

The lyrebird on that clip is not endangered, in fact is quite common in some areas, although they are only found in a fairly confined area (in Australian terms *g*). I believe there is another species which is rated as vulnerable.
Actually, Australia has a lot of wonders, from the scenery to the wildlife to the food and wine *g* I think the animals are what most people are intrigued with, also the fact that we have a lot of 'dangerous' animals. It is often hard to convice people that these are mostly not seen by city dwellers, so don't really rate on our fear scales.
Brown snake, anyone??

I have often wondered why that Bryson book is called 'In a Sunburned Country' in places where the readers wouldn't know the origin of that phrase - a poem famous here called 'My Country' by Dorothea MacKellar - and called 'Downunder' here, where we rarely use that phrase. Note that the poem says 'sunburnt' not 'sunburned'.

MY COUNTRY
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar

Great poem Kath. Has it be set to music?

Dido, I just thought of a very early mention of birdsong

"Smale fowles maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open ye"

from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales The Prologue.

I don't have a poem for you, but I do have this clock, which we got for a holiday present a while back. The chimes really are the birdsongs, and they are quite lovely.

Here is a link that might be useful: Audobon Bird Clock

The lyrebird is incredible! If that were presented by anyone but Attenborough and the BBC, I would think it was fake!

Has anyone solved the mystery of the metal-grating bird?

I just listened to the lyre bird excerpt - wow what an imitation artist! Plus I haven't seen David Atenborough for years but he still looks the same (just older - don't we all?)

Wonderful bird but not sure I'd like to hear its version of car alarms at 6 in the morning.

I have one that flies in the window and perches on the pallid bust of Pallas above my chamber door. I haven't made out what it says yet.

Astrokath, Bryson quotes this much of the poem at the beginning of the book:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

He admits that the book should be called In a Sunburnt Country but, without explanation he says, "But it's not."
Go figure.

Just a guess - 99% of his U.S. audience would be completely puzzled by sunburnt. Don't want to affect book sales and all!

Everyone I know says "sunburnt" to describe the result of being in the sun too long-why is that confusing to US readers? Or do you mean in reference to the poem? Since the poem is quoted in the beginning, that shouldn't be confusing either.

I am remembering that he did have an explanation - need to dig my book out as well (yeah, sunburnt is a read expression here, shouldn't have been a big surprise. )

Bookmom,

I had to laugh at your description of the "cheeseburger" bird. My DH also describes it that way. That is the song of the chicadee, in case you were wondering.

The 15th April is Swallow Day in Great Britain, a fact I learnt last night from our local TV weatherman, a mine of interesting facts.
I think it may be rather a chilly home-coming for them and have often wondered how they are able to delay their return from North Africa by a few days when they cannot know what the climate will be like when they get here.
So many of our returning birds are shot on their long journey over the Med and up through Italy/France it is amazing any make it back. Many rest on the island of Malta where the population greets them with a barrage of bullets.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:2117359}}

Good grief, Vee, those baby birds look so desperate as to be about to commit mayhem! In the US, there used to be a popular song, "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano...." Evidently they return to a part of California yearly, so noted.

We now have the "Canada Geese Season" in Tidewater, VA. Lots of raucous cries and flotillas of birds on lakes nearby and at this time we see the downy baby geese, as well.

Then there's the less well-known return of the buzzards (turkey vultures) to Hinkley, Ohio ...

Here is a link that might be useful: The Buzzards of Hinkley, Ohio

My husband saw two mallard ducks fighting over a third in our neighbor's yard yesterday. (We live near a big drainage ditch.) He said feathers were literally flying, and the loser waddled off.

I was making a rather obtuse reference to the often arcane differences between U.S. and British usage and spellings. I think the publisher would picture a potential buyer standing in front of stack of books in Borders and saying to him/herself, "Isn't it spelled sunburned?" And possibly walking away, yikes!

Rouan, thanks for the ID. I think my mother-in-law told me the same thing, but to me it will be the cheeseburger bird. It must know I've been complaining about it for years and went away as I haven't heard it yet this spring. It's replacement is a bird that sounds like a slow machine gun. eh..eh..eh..eh..eh

This site is nice for listening to bird songs, though it may be limited to birds of North America. It isn't terribly helpful if you don't know what the bird is as you are limited to guessing. My son and I did ID the "zebra" bird at our feeder which turned out to be a black & white warbler.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bird guide