Skulking

I had another very useful meeting with the occupational therapist at Stratford Hospital this morning, emerging with a new wrist support, a gold star for improvement, and a smiley face badge. After coffee and cake with R I went down the river after birds, and found a little group of redwings worming around the rec'.

I was stalking them carefully, wondering why they always seem to prefer working in the darkest available places, when I nearly stood on one which had been lurking in deep shade under a tree, and scuttled away from my boots with a flurry of wings and some grumpy muttering. I was very surprised that one of these reactive birds had let me get so close to it, and more surprised yet that it only went a few metres away and then resumed digging, but when I turned the lens on it I realised that it wasn't a redwing after all, but a song thrush. This resolved the mystery. In my experience song thrushes are almost indescribably stupid - I'm still slightly traumatised by the memory from a few years ago of three juveniles squashed flat on our lane, one after the other, numbers two and three having apparently stood and watched number one getting flattened by a car, but then instead of flying away just waited while it mowed each of them down too - so the fact that it would let a human get within stamping distance was really no surprise at all.

Anyway, I don't often get to photograph song thrushes, despite the fact that there are believed to be well over a million breeding pairs in the UK, so this was a welcome opportunity, and the thrush stood and gazed at me (with no sign of any thought processes going on) while I took full advantage. Coincidentally I was reading Lev Parikian's bird song thread on Twitter (hoho) just this morning, and it was interesting to compare the noise of the song thrush - which I've always thought was a pretty messy affair - with that of the mistle thrush. Apparently many people are disparaging about the mistle thrush's song, on the basis that it's not quite as good as a blackbird's (what is?), but I rather like it.