Hello O multi-tongued one.
What language do you speak?
My O my what a lot you have to say.
Your trilling, warbling, chipping, chopping song.
And again.
Trilling, warbling, chipping and chopping.
And again!
There! I see you up in the bare Field Maple.
Who are you?
I see you are kind of tan in colour with speckles and, if I may say so, really quite plump. Could you be the noble Thrush, the Thrush of Throssel Hole Farm? Well, if you are your descendants have been serenading monks here since 1970.
Sing on please. Bring us spring.
Bill Wyat’s article brought back a memory or two. I well remeber the days when the place was a hippie colony. One of those hippies worked alongside me at Alston Foundry back then.
A couple of years later, in 1975, I had a look up at Throssel to see what it was going on….
The rest as the saying goes, is history.
“Gyate, gyate, ….
There was a time when there was a bird at Throssel – but was it a thrush or a blackbird? – that could do the most wonderful imitation of the ‘outside bell’ we had on the telephone then. Such a good imitation that once in the meditation hall we all exploded with laughter when we heard it.
Sitting in Japan in warmer weather I usually hear the watery song of the ‘urugisu’ – the ‘Japanese nightingale’ which is a very thrush-like bird. In bigger temples in urban areas there is always the sound of crows who make their homes there a bit like rooks do in English churchyards.
My childhood recollection is that thrushes and blackbirds were then of comparable number, but now thrushes are much rarer whereas the urban blackbird is a familiar sight. So you are fortunate that Throssel still provides the environment for “throssels”. Likewise I think sparrows have all but disappeared. Here in Singapore, the noisy Indian Mynah bird is everywhere, always in pairs, and with extraordinary “attitude”, barely troubling to move as you pass by, rather a stare from a beady eye and a cocked head, as if to say “what’s your problem”. Leave food for a second in an outdoor eating place and they are on the table instantly – just raising your newspaper to read is enough! Then there are blue and fluorescent green birds, flitting in the tree tops as I walk to work. And, last but not least, the humble sparrow does well here, which provides me with a cheerful link to the past.
Thanks you people. Down at the Meditation Group meeting the other evening in Chichester, or Portsmouth, they were wondering how I find my links. Do I spend hours browsing? Nope!
The way I found the link in this article was simple. I wanted to get a reference for a Thrush and on a whim looked up Throssel Hole Farm on Google. I’d meant to type Thrush Hall Farm but through force of habit I’d put Throssel Hole. I found the link by accident and no, I don’t brows much. There isn’t the time.
I was a bit shocked to hear the sparrow is not amongst us so much now Walter. I’d no idea.
Apparently sparrows are losing numbers in the towns. There are plenty in our village.
Plenty here too apparently.