Doverodde Diary: Day 11 - Disappointment

The thief of birdsong is trying to catch the colour of rain.

- It’s just grey, he complains.

Doverodde Diary: Day 10 - The Wild Swans

Swans make a wheezing sound as they fly, and for years I thought this came from their beaks, because with their necks stretched out ahead of them they seem to be straining to breathe. Now I realise it is the sound of their wings beating against the air.

There’s a Hans Christian Andersen tale in which a wicked queen turns her eleven stepsons into swans. To restore them to human form, their sister must knit shirts of nettles to throw over their backs. While she knits she cannot speak a word. When the time comes to rescue them, she has still to finish the sleeve of the final shirt, so the youngest prince keeps his swan’s wing. There are at least eleven swans on the lake at Doverkil but I can’t find any nettles. And I have no desire to silence the swans' wings.

Doverodde Diary: Day 4 - Which Bird?

They say that birdsong is a sure sign of spring. Well, this week every bird is in song, so I’m not sure why that bird, or rather that song, arrested me. I’m afraid I can’t quite describe how it went, being no expert in the curious phonetics of birdsong. I stared into the branches for some time before I saw a small dull thing perched on what looked like a dead twig at the very tip of the tree. I was able to match the peculiar sound to the wobble of its throat, so I knew I’d got the right one. But what was it?

Liz peered where I was pointing and said she thought it might be the Fuglekonge.

The Fuglekonge, or crested wren, is Europe’s smallest bird, and rather rare, according to the bird book. I was impressed that we’d found a Fuglekonge without even trying, but the bird book also suggested that what we’d seen was actually a Stillids, or common goldfinch. Now Liz says it’s a goldfinch for sure, but I’m sticking to my small bird story.

The Raven and The Gull: A Cautionary Tale

Listen. Do you know why the raven is so black, so black, so dull and black in colour? It is all on account of its obstinacy.

It happened in the days when all the birds were arranging their colours and the pattern in their coats. And the raven and the gull happened to meet midway between land and sea, and they agreed to paint each other.

The raven began, and painted the other white, with nice black blotches showing between. The gull thought that very fine indeed, and began to do the same by the raven, painting it a coat exactly like its own.

But then the raven fell into a rage, and declared that the pattern was frightfully ugly, and the gull, offended at all the fuss, simply splashed it black all over.

And now you see why the raven is black.


Postscript

While reading Lucretius De rerum natura to research my writing on Emma Stibbon, I came across an uncanny echo of this tale in his discourse on colour.

'Since there is no natural connection between particular colours and particular shapes, atoms (if they were not colourless) might equally well be of any colour irrespective of their form. Why then are not their compounds tinted with every shade of colour irrespective of their kind? We should expect on this hypothesis that ravens in flight would often emit a snowy sheen from snowy wings; and that some swans would be black, being composed of black atoms, or would display some other uniform or variegated colour.'