Nature Table Archive 2021

January 2021 update

Nature seems to be at its greyest in January. And yet, as the year imperceptibly turns, the heralds of spring come into their own… The robin will sing a complicated song under his breath to you if you are out gardening, while at dawn and dusk the song thrush begins to pour out an ecstatic effusion of song. In fact the word ‘song’ is too merry a description: there is an urgency and passion in those ingeniously inventive phrases, each usually repeated twice or thrice, that suggest a darker imperative. Have you heard one of our Cattistock thrushes? If so you will have heard one of the descendants of the thrush Hardy wrote about:

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware .

From The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy, December 29^th 1900.