Oh, to be in England

How poetic is that title? You're about to find out. Even the huffing and puffing human from the last blog can't compete with the birds singing. A little Chiffchaff singing its heart out on a wire of all places; a Great Spotted Woodpecker doing the same on an electricity post; the constant presence of a melodious Blackcap; even the yaffling of a Green Woodpecker (these are all happening at once, around our house); lots of Robins, Wrens, Blackbirds with beaks full of worms et al, and the very loud wheezing Greenfinch which is attempting to outdue the resident human patient.

The puffing patient is progressing so well that he too has been marvelling at the birdsong. By the time I get round to recording it, they will have quietened down. An easier solution is provided by Robert Browning in this poem, which sums up all that has been happening outside for the last few days.

Home - Thoughts, from Abroad
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughts and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed peartree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge -
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
ca. 1848
(from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2, 1993, Norton: London)

Across the road - imagine the birdsong

Whilst out snapping the above at the weekend, I came across this greenhouse in nearby garden.

Continuing the literary theme, it probably belongs to Miss Haversham in Great Expectations.