Tap, Tap, Tap!

I heard him and, any distraction from my daily practice, rushed to the windows on the south side of my house and grabbed my opera glasses....and there he was!

A beautiful Woodpecker! 

His head was black and white, flashed with crimson and his long yellow beak searching for insects in the lime tree at the bottom of my garden. 

Oh, how I wish that he would stay but he zipped off, reminding me of the bullfinch with his pink chest, who comes to visit but lingers so briefly. I look them all up in my battered bird book!

These days I wake to the brilliant sound of a little wren, at any time after 3.45  in the morning. Her voice is so strong and she so tiny, and later in the day when she is upset, she chatters incessantly.

There are two pairs of blackbirds who call to each other and one, a handsome male with a golden eye and orange beak, sings magnificently at dusk from the rooftops to the South and at dawn from the ariels on the north side of the house. I fed them this winter for the first time, and could spend all day watching instead of studying. We have nightingales too, that I have been so glad to hear very late at night as I come back from Italy, and robins, confused by the new streetlights, singing at the wrong time. The bluetits visit in a threesome, poking among the ivy for their lunch......Now I understand why Olivier Messian wrote so wonderfully about birds. He must have listened to them all the time in that concentration camp. That's where he wrote Le Quattuor pour le Fin du Temps, full of birdsong strident and beautiful. 

There's an Angel in there too.

I find their voices more and more intriguing and the greatest lesson for a singer, and feel a bit churlish as I gently hone my 132 decibels beside their glorious songs.