The soundscape before spring…

At dawn the rich broken song of a solitary blackbird sweeps thicker than sunlight across the rooftops. I was surprised at first. The sky is rarely still enough for melodic song here. The herring gulls with their shark-like eyes fill the daylight with their gasping cries, as do the less formidable common gulls. The air vibrates with their shouts, undulating and rising. The shade of the few trees which grow above shoulder height in this wind-blown town, flutters with the velvet coos of Collared Doves (U-niiiit-ed, U-niiiit-ed) and their chunky cousins the Wood Pigeon (I-don’t-waaaant-to-mummy). And even indoors fireplaces echo with the creaking murmurs of jackdaws investigating chimneys, planning ahead for this year’s brood.

It is the starlings however that dominate the soundscape right now. Barks and screams of jackdaws and gulls, are always underscored, by the electrical chatter of the starlings, the maestros of imitation. It is a perpetual wall of clicking, burbling, whistling sound, so dense that it is almost inaudible.

The blue-black bodies that cluster like ragged scraps of fabric caught on the criss-crossing wires can also, in their ever-presence become invisible. It is at the edges of the day when these pointed bodies and sounds become more distinct. Silhouettes against pink dusk skies. The mechanical noises of the day, a car alarm- the thrum of a lawnmower- transposed and elevated into song. For the starling is a musician, sampling, remixing and broadcasting the soundtrack to emerging spring.

Leaning out into the early morning street I searched the rooftops and chimneys for the blackbird. On a TV aerial, clear against the palest blue morning sky, a scrap of iridescence winked at me.