And Your Bird Can Sing

An onion seedhead surveys my garden

In the ancient Welsh legend of Branwen the eponymous queen has been demoted to the scullery and given a regular beating because her half-brother, a nasty piece of work, had mutilated some horses belonging to the king. Her only friend is a starling which in a desperate bid for freedom she teaches to speak (in Old Welsh presumably, quite a formidable undertaking for a bird-brain), instructs it to locate her other brother who happens to be a giant, and ties a letter to its leg. Even though the bird could talk I suppose she didn't want to risk it forgetting what the message was on its long search.

I could be forgiven for thinking that a similar fate has occurred to one of my siblings and they're sending birds to find me (they must have lost their mobile phone). A wren last week came hurtling through the caravan door as I sat doing the crossword and spent a while flitting around the cramped space, chirping, presumably in an attempt to communicate with me. Any letter crying for help attached to its leg must have previously come loose and fallen off.

Harlech, where Branwen was from

It gave up eventually but then on Sunday night up in the outhouse where I sleep I opened the door and a blue-tit flew straight in. Again, any message it may have had for me it singularly failed to communicate. It didn't really utter any sound at all. It just flew around the room, clinging to the striplight, a wall-hanging, my armchair, the curtain-rail, even the top of the door, letting me get quite close to it as I tried to encourage it back out of the door. For a good half-an-hour I left it open but the bird refused to leave - maybe because I hadn't yet understood its message. In the end it was me who gave up, shut the door, turned the light off and went to bed. Early the next morning I tried the same tactic and this time it was off like a shot. I'm still searching for its handwritten note.

I'm reminded of the dolphins in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which, being more intelligent than humans, were aware of the Earth's imminent demise and spent a good while trying to alert the human race through all means at their disposal, inevitably misinterpreted as amusing acrobatic displays. Eventually of course the dolphins had to give up and leave Earth by their own means, their last message being misconstrued as “..a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the Star-Spangled Banner.” It actually meant So Long and Thanks For All The Fish.

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In reality it's birds not dolphins that are sending us a message - about the warming planet. Research such as this finds that birds are living further north each year - e.g the little egret was recently only found on the Continent but is now frequently seen in England. Cetti's warblers are being spotted further north in Britain. And some British species, such as the golden plover or the snow bunting, will be unable to move further north and so face decline. Unlike dolphins they won't have an escape route to another dimension. 

What is this tomato plant trying to tell me?