Blackbirds - stories

Blackbirds - story #1

When I was little my Mum used to tell us kids: "the blackbirds are Father Christmas' helpers... they're watching and they'll tell him if youv'e been bad or good".

We had a green back lawn, with stepping stones out to the HIlls Hoist.

I would look out of the kitchen window onto the lawn and see the blackbirds hopping, just going abut their business (perfectly nonchalant I used to think).

I was a good girl.

I love that very effective ploy of my Mum's but I never used it on my own kids, I think because of another story my nephew (now in his thirties) once told me: that his Mum had told him Father Christmas watches, and that he was always a little bit scared going to bed each night he might catch sight of a bearded old man peeking through the curtains.

  

Blackbirds - story #2

Someone once told me that blackbirds are the rats of the garden.

When I go down the back, where the veggies grow, I sometimes catch one out the corner of my eye  scurrying past through the undergrowth catching bugs (they make me jump sideways). 

I am always relieved when it is a blackbird not a rat.

Blackbirds - story #3

A blackbird used to nest each year in the same spot, in the ash tree just next to the pergola, where we would throw the ball for the dog (the dog would go crazy barking at the birds all through spring as the babies grew, but the birds don't nest there anymore, and at any rate, he is too blind and too deaf to notice).

Blackbirds - story # 4

There is a bird call that my husband whistles back to (I think it is the blackbird). My son does it too (really well). I can't always tell if it is the bird I'm hearing in the garden, or if he is somewhere just out of sight.

Lisa Harms