Getting Nostalgic

It has been a grey day full of drizzle today.  The only real high point has been the Song Thrush which has sung his little lungs out all day long.  He is the first I have heard this year.  I love those season's firsts, especially the Spring ones because they are so full of promise.  I like to think it is the same Song Thrush which sang all day every day last year.  I know it is probably not but the romantic in me likes to think it's the same bird back up in his high tree singing his song for me.  I think Song Thrush is just about my favourite birdsong, there is something comforting about it's repetition.  I can still remember identifying my first Song Thrush by song, I was walking my dogs in Claybury Woods.  Obviously I knew what they looked like but I was so chuffed to have picked one up on it's song.  It never ceases to amaze me how I have a terrible memory yet can remember most of my birding 'firsts' as clearly as if it were yesterday.  In fact sometimes yesterday is a bit blurry with me so even clearer than yesterday! 

I could pretty much tell you were I was when I saw/heard my first of most birds, not just the rare ones but the commoner ones too.  I especially remember my first Wren.  It's a very precious memory to me because it's one of the few really clear happy memories I have of my late father.  We were somewhere in North Norfolk on holiday.  We had hired a horse drawn gypsy caravan for a week.  It seems the most bizarre thing to do looking back now but that's what we did.  The three of us and our little Cairn Terrier, Sally, all together in a tiny gypsy caravan.  We spent the day clip-clopping along the country roads and in the evening would pull up on any available patch of grass, like a village green, tether the horse and camp for the night.  Thinking about it now I can't believe we were not moved on by the police of lynched by angry villagers but that's what the people who rented the caravans out told us to do.  Add to that we had no experience with horses at all it could have been a total disaster but it was actually really fun.  Anyway, on the day in we had stopped for the day on a common somewhere, I remember there were gorse bushes.  Dad and I were sitting on a blanket and I had my treasured bird book out.  I still have that book and I still love it.  I remarked to Dad that I had never seen a Wren.  He appeared shocked and looked around for about 20 seconds before saying 'There's one' and pointing to a lovely little Jenny Wren sitting in the bushes.  I was dead chuffed and so impressed that he had found one just like that.  So that was my first Wren and a lovely memory.



This was our home for a week!