06 12 07

On the sea: a low guttural r-rak & moaning moo-oo-airh

At the headland: croaking & retching, frarnk & a liquid bubbling trill cour-li crwee croo-ee

In the oakwood: a cascade of notes ending with a flourish – choo-ee-o then chwink wheet chwit & a persistent scolding wheet tsack tsack & tit tit tit & a prolonged breathless jingle of high notes

On the hill: a croaking clucking plainsong & a deep high metallic prronk

In the sky: pee-oo mee-oo

Birdsong is hard to approximate in our alphabet & there’s a huge debate about its musical notation, with some commentators claiming that, Messaien & Handel notwithstanding, it’s nonsense to transcribe birdsong into Western 12 note scales, since they sing microtonally. Charles Ives describes microtones as the notes between the cracks on a piano. For sure the “words” used to describe birdsong here, which I drew in part from Peterson, Mountfort & Hollom’s Birds of Britain & Europe, my companion for all my adult life, are perhaps unrecognisable as the liquid languages of birds I encounter this morning on a walk to Port a’ Bhata. It’s also been argued that human music is a response to & (to begin with at least), an imitation of birdsong. There’s no doubt that it’s the same impulse that has me laughing & rasping aloud a fragment from the Song of the Volga Boatmen as I step yet again into ankle deep mud, slotted with deerprints along the path stags & hinds have trodden for how long.

Birdsong is a response, a pure clear communication of heart & mind & body together, spontaneous; & to hear, among hills & bays, is fathomless & silencing.

But nothing silences the possible.