Blakckbird

Blackbirds don't care much about what the stage looks like, as long as the message goes through, it seems. Outside my kitchen window this bird sat down for a while to sing in the tree we stripped of its branches a couple of months ago.

The blackbird is one of my absolute favourite singers, they have a huge repertoire and they are also skilful imitators of other birds, or sounds in the vicinity. Once I was living in a flat where one of the blackbirds in the garden had learnt to imitate a common mobile signal, to the annoyance among the neighbours who started to look for their phones when the bird sang. It also managed to sing a short blues phrase that probably one of the humans had whistled enough times for it to imitate it. I have myself whistled a short phrase to a blackbird and the bird repeated it very quickly with the exact intonation and rhythm. Remarkable birds.