WHEN I first started to listen to birdsong, it was like being given a new sense. For most people, birdsong is an agreeable soundtrack to a dog walk, a picnic, summer drinking, summer loving. It is the elevator music of the high spring: you are aware of it without being aware of it.
But then I learned the instruments of the orchestra, learned to tell one bird from another, learned to listen as well as to hear: and suddenly it was all quite different. The world, I mean. But how to respond?
A nightingale in full song. Response one: ah,…
