DAWN

0540.
Blackie is singing outside my window.
This is the rough end of a belief that we should be diurnal. Go to bed when it is dark. Rise when it is light.
So comes the listening - a practice I do not find easy. The mind strays away from the present moment into all sorts of versions of past and future. Stories.
This morning, Blackie holds my attention. It is a truly beautiful, heart-filling sound, and with a background rivulet of curlews, I cannot imagine a finer alarm clock. For one raised in sounds of traffic, rowing neighbours, and the odd siren, it is a privilege worth daily thanks.
It sets me thinking too.
Current science holds that the dawn chorus is a territorial claim, made over and over again. In some time, I imagine science will be proved wrong again.
Blackie does not repeat himself. The core melody is similar, but not the same each time. He ends it differently, and adds all sorts of variants throughout his aria. Each call is different. And the answering calls from neighbour blackbird also differ each time they are made. Sometimes I could swear they are interrogative, sometimes jussive, and sometimes downright imperative.
What I believe I am listening to is conversation, perhaps with repetitive themes, but with stimulus and response both present in the song.
Why would they just repeat the inane "here I am; this is mine"?
Why wouldn't they be talking about what would be important to them that day? The weather? The wind direction? Where they will be going for food? Where they have heard or sensed food might be? What threats are about? What opportunities? These seem far more likely to me, even if more sophisticated.
Maybe even, like me, Blackie sends up a prayer of exultation at simply being alive to hear this marvellous round of sound.
Birds and animals are far cleverer, I believe, than we humans, and especially scientists, acknowledge.
After all, we have many singers, but few as fine as a blackbird.
And not a single one who can combine that beautiful voice with the ability to fly.