The soul thrush

This young male blackbird (recognisable for its brownish wings and black smudges on its bill) sung its beautiful song in front of my house yesterday. Were not for the fact that the blackbird song is so familiar we would herald the blackbird as one of the most pleasant songsters. The song thrush gets the name, but in comparison it's just an apprentice compared to the musical delivery of the blackbird. When I first moved to the UK, my garden's blackbird sung the first notes of Ella Fitzgerald 'Fascinating Rhythm', one of the blackbirds a couple of year back sung 'La Cucaracha' chorus really well. It really deserves the name of the soul thrush.

The Greenfinch song

Few sounds are more evocative to me than the song of the Greenfinch. It brings back memories of trying to work out bird songs from scratch when, as a young teenager I started to watch birds in my local park. The Greenfinch's loud, distinctive cicada-like song carries longer than the beautiful, canary-like warbling notes that alternate with it. It took me attempts to finally find the source of the song, high on the canopy of a pine trees they used as song post. Later I also watched their display flight, with slow-motion butterfly-like wingbeats high over the trees, as they sing.
 Greenfinches have started to sing in the last couple of weeks and as I realised there is no Greenfinch post in the blog, today is the first step to amend that. I took the top shot today on my way to work, as I heard the finch calling. Listen to its song in this Xenocanto recording.

Aerial song

From a Hawthorn

A pair in an Ash tree with male singing.