Saturday 14 March 2009

Another Blackbird Song

Another little snippet of the Blackbirds song. this time with the waveform. I think I'll make another video soon with slightly different editing of the .WAV file. This Blogger video does not seem to be loading very well, it is only a small file so this should not happen. I may try an alternative method.
Stay tuned.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

The Blackbird Sings


I've mentioned before how it is a great occasion for me to hear the Blackbird resume singing for the first time in the year. This usually happens in February or March in the North West of England where I do be. It's like the first Snowdrop flowers appearing at the end of Winter or the first buds of blossom at the beginning of Spring.

I haven't any "proper" sound recording equipment so I've been using my little Panasonic camcorder to record any interesting sound and extracting the audio from the resulting video file. That is what I have done with this recording made this evening (Wednesday March 4th) Here is the Blackbird Song in an MP3 format (3.6MB) I may make a Flash video of it showing the waveform display, if I can figure out how to do it.

Over the years I've noticed that the song develops as the year progresses. From a stuttering, though still beautiful, collection of doublets, triplets and assorted calls to a full bodied fully formed song.
The Blackbird will listen to other male Blackbirds and copy a segment of that birds song if it likes it, and incorporate that into its own song. I've heard them practice and develop little riffs over the course of Spring and Summer. Just think of that for a few moments, the little fellah sits there on his favourite perch checking out his rivals song. There must be a process in his mind that critically analyses the song and then goes "Oooo, I like that, I can work with that". He then weaves it into his own song and hopefully attracts a female with his artistry. So in this way the female too has a say as to what is deemed to be a "good" song.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

I've been playing around with Windows Movie Maker after finding one of my favoured videos has gone missing from utube. This is the result.
I'm hoping I am not breaking any copyright by publishing this. There are hundreds of similar videos on utube and the like which do not appear to have fallen foul of the law. Still I think I'll investigate more. We don't want to be breaking laws now do we.

Monday 2 March 2009

Blackbirds singing

Just a little note to say I've noticed the Blackbirds have just started singing again. I've heard the odd Blackbird throw out a few notes here and there over the past few weeks, but it was just today in my Mam's garden that I heard a couple singing to each other. Actually I think they were singing at each other.
Beautiful time of year, so much happening, nothing stands still, as if anything ever did.