On the path to Wincle Minn, I heard redwings singing from the treetops. It was notable because, while 700,000 of them winter in these islands, barely 50 stay to breed. Yet the birds migrating back to Iceland or Scandinavia, lulled by increases in day length and temperature, start to tune up until the whole flock catches this pre-song habit. The collective voices mark a very specific moment in the year and, as much as the sight of a swallow, tuneless late March redwing rehearsals speak only of spring.
It wasn’t so much a sound as a soundscape or sonic atmosphere: a seamless layer of twittering mixed with awkward rubbery squalling, yet also scraps of sweetness. A recurrent element was a five-six note running of scales, up or down, with a hint of song thrush but of song thrush song stuttering, or as if the phrases had spilled out inadvertently.
As I moved, so redwings moved tree to tree, but not perhaps out of fear. It felt as if they were searching for part of the sonic canopy where there was a gap so that they could tune their voices to the flock’s tuneless wanderings. And it never stopped. I made recordings running 60 seconds, but I could easily have done it for half an hour. Throughout that whole period, it went on and on as the same exuberant outpouring.
A further aspect was a lack of location, partly because the birds were spread but also because the sound source was inherently unfixed and unfixable. It reminded me in this specific regard of frog song. Yet I always imagine the guttural earth music of the amphibians as black in colour, while redwing subsong was a pale shade – perhaps the colour of sallow blossom or cherry plum petals – and full of light.
Initially, I thought how wonderful to have this preview of their breeding places. In hearing the songs of redwings was I not, in some sense, encountering northern Sweden or Norway? But no, I reflected later, what I was hearing was not the redwings of June, but their rehearsals of March; not the sound of Scandinavia but of Wincle Minn, right here and only now.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
