On Friday the blackbirds opened their concert season. Here’s what I wrote about them four years ago.
Oh, still my heart — I just heard the year’s first blackbird serenade! I opened the kitchen window a crack and listened to it while having my evening sandwich and cup of rooibos. I love the blackbird. It sings at the most unsettling time of the year.
These spring and early summer evenings, when the light never really fades and the blackbird sings its heart out… They fill me with a nameless urgency, a desperate itch for something I can’t put words to. Watching myself dispassionately from outside, I can see that it’s just the spring rut. But from the inside of my little mammal brain, oh man, it feels like I’ll have to walk to Kamchatka to ever find peace again.
Turdus merula, “solitary thrush”. In Swedish it’s koltrast, “coal thrush”. I hope to hear it on my deathbed one day.
[More blog entries about spring, blackbird, birds, Sweden; koltrast, fåglar, vår.]