The blackbirds are singing, the blackthorn's out and so are the magnolias

Walking with Mrs H a few evenings ago the birdsong at dusk was almost loud enough to make me take my hearing aids out. Several male blackbirds in fairly close proximity were going at it big time. I assumed they were competing to impress potential mates, though I've since read they don't like the impending dark. Roosting time can make one call nervously, starting off a host of others, like dogs in kennels. Come to think of it, their calls were a bit more urgent and anxious sounding than their lyrically musical daytime song. Unlike Paul McCartney's blackbird, they don't go on to sing at the dead of night, although street lights can confuse them. They sing during the breeding season from March to about July: after that they've got more important things to do.

I've written before that blackbirds are my favourite birds, mainly because of their melodic and variable song from which individuals can be identified, sometimes by the characteristic way they end. At our last house one had developed a song ending that sounded just like a telephone ringing, which caused us to run into the house for a phantom phone call on a number of occasions until we realised. We listened out for it several years in a row until one spring there was no telephone ring coming from the bird's favourite vantage point - a neighbour's chimney - and we hoped our cat wasn't responsible. One of the websites below confirms their ability to mimic:

"There is no doubt that the Blackbird is one of Britain’s finest songsters. Each phrase is a discrete production, with a significant pause from the last, and no phrase is immediately repeated (making it very different to the Song Thrush’s song.) Listen carefully and you might notice that each phrase begins with glorious contralto fluty notes, but ends much less tunefully, with a squeak or chuckle.These endings vary enormously, and allow for a dash of mimicry, not always of another bird, but even bells or human voices. Each individual male Blackbird (the females don’t sing) has a repertoire of at least 100 song-phrases."

While I hesitate to quibble with a serious bird watcher, female blackbirds definitely do sing: I've watched one doing it (identifiable because of course they are brown not black) and since read on another expert's website that the "fact" they don't sing is a myth. They may not sing as dramatically as a typical male but very much in characteristic blackbird style.

Early last spring I was confused by what sounded like a blackbird bursting into song but only very briefly, then trying again. It also sounded a little bit like a bird imitating a blackbird and not quite getting it right. I then spotted a young blackbird and surmised that it was an adolescent practising, while doubting whether that could really be correct.

But it is: one of the sites below notes that the birds quietly sing to themselves early in the calendar year. This is known as subsong, "a version uttered by both juveniles and adults outside of the breeding season". They go on to say "it may well denote birds with a low sexual impulse". I'll take this as confirming my theory about a junior bird, rather than the bird equivalent of DSD.

Hearing the blackbirds start to sing always gladdens my heart as does the blackthorn coming into bloom as they are harbingers of spring. Strangely, I developed an affection for blackthorn after digging up a substantial blackthorn hedge that was occupying a quarter of the garden of a house we bought over 20 years ago, when I was still young enough to do such things. I'd had a travelling gardener (I think he was literally an Irish Traveller) cut down the hedge at ground level and take away the voluminous waste:

I guessed that the builders had done the same before turfing the garden. Ageing plant tags against the fence showed that the first owners had planted out a border before the hedge reasserted itself. It was large enough to make me doubt whether we could ever make a nice garden of the space, but I resolved that, this time, the roots would just have to come out, which took many hours and a lot of digging. (And, to be fair, use of a digger to get out the largest chunks when we hired a landscaper). I was concerned that the hedge would still regrow, especially since part of it remained on the far side of the fence. But it turns out blackthorn is fairly well behaved, the garden worked and we were also rewarded with the bloom over the top of the fence each spring, both reasons for my fondness for the rather straggly shrub with what can be a fairly bright bloom but often looks rather cream compared with the much showier hawthorn. Here I am looking much younger and sitting in the garden we created:

You can see the remnants of the large hedge behind the fence. I hadn't been able to tell blackthorn from hawthorn until then, but it's quite straightforward. Blackthorn blooms on the bare stems, before the leaves appear, whereas the hawthorn leaves appear first. So if you see a thicket in bloom now with no leaves it will be blackthorn. Like this, photographed a few days ago:

It's quite common to find mixed hedges and thickets with both present. Right now that will appear as patches with bloom and no leaves and patches with leaves and no bloom. Of course, later in the year the difference is obvious: the hawthorn berries are red, while the blackthorn sloes are black with a hint of blue when you look closely. One thing isn't different: you can make gin with either of them. Which I know because last autumn I saw a chap standing for some time at the end of my driveway. I went to inquire if he was lost as there is an adjacent footpath which we sometimes see people staring at in confusion as they realise they're on the wrong path. But it turned out he was picking blackthorn sloes from the bush there. He politely asked if I minded and explained he made gin with them. 

Apparently hawthorn gin is nicer than sloe gin: it's claimed to be sweeter and not as syrupy. You can also make jams or jellies from both haw and blackthorn. Not that I intend to try.

Now we have the magnolias going strong, magnificent at Bodnant gardens currently, with fabulous headstrong aromas. And they're also out at Augusta, with a summer of sport presaged by the Masters golf. So 2023 really is now fully underway.

PS Minutes after finishing this post I read a review of the book Wild Air by James McDonald Lockhart which says that bird song does actually sound louder at night. This is because the sound waves are bent away from the relatively warm air towards the cooling night ground. It also notes that the nightingale population is down 90% in 40 years, skylarks are down 50% in the same period and lapwings probably nearly 90% since 1987. Worrying. Indeed, scary to think how meagre, improverished and degraded our immediate environment may be by the time today's schoolchildren are my age.

Read all about blackbird song at:

https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/news/blackbird-bird-song#:~:text=Blackbirds%20sing%20most%20typically%20during,from%20March%20through%20to%20July

https://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/blackbird.html

and https://www.birdwatching.co.uk/features/dominic-couzens/blackbird/

If you want to make stuff from hawthorn berries, see https://monicawilde.com/how-to-make-hawthorn-berry-gin-or-tincture/

Or you can make hedgerow jam with a polyglot of sloes and berries: https://hedgecombers.com/sloe-and-blackberry-hedgerow-jam/