Birdsong, George Michael, Links

My friend Debs found me these BBC clips of garden birds singing. Click on the link, and you'll get a chart of our most common birds over here. Click beneath the picture and that bird's song sings out! How fantastic is that!?!

Anyway: here's my original birdsong post

THE HOUR IS EARLY: our local birds' rather flimsy dawn chorus has just ended. Either they're down in numbers because their babies have yet to be born (stop press: which actually isn't true - it's June already!); or the entire musical fantasia was drowned out by some mockingbird pretending to be an alarm clock right beside my open window. I don't know. But the full-on dawn chorus, hundreds of feathered troubadours trilling their tiny beaks off is quite something to experience. They say British birds sing the best in the world. Which statement strikes me as slightly dodgy. why, when most of these songbirds' ranges extend throughout Northern and Central Europe should their British cousins put on a better show than anywhere else? Perhaps possibly the precise mix of species here produces a somehow superior spice of song? Or more likely, somehow, methinks, this idea got into my head thanks to a BBC announcer's jingoistically scripted wildlife documentary woodworming its way into the brains of my youth:

Britannia still rules the airwaves, chaps! We broadcast our birdsong across the globe!

My friend Mother Hubbard returned fomr a six-week trip to Melbourne Australia a couple of years back with tales of parrots on back porches and exotic car alarm birds. I'll never forget in my teens receiving family video from my rels in Sydney. Man! The shrilling, cawing, whooping, drop-dropping and trilling (far slower than a British garden trill and seemingly five octaves deeper) all sounded to me like a rainforest garden come alive in the suburbs of New South Wales. Amazing! I'd no idea Aussie birds sounded like that! I think maybe my "alarm clock bird" has relations Down Under too. I admit I listened to its monotone for ages thinking "What is this?" Till finally I realized it was a mimicked song ... duh!!

RECENTLY I REALIZED MY LINKS are in total disarray. I'm talking about my blogging links more than anything. Now I must explain that most (in fact nearly all) people I contact on a frequent basis: I know their URLs by heart - or else I click their commnets and find them that way. Which has resulted in the faintly horrifying situation of some people I know and like very much appearing nowhere at all. And yet blogrolls of folks, some of whom I know barely at all are permanently posted beside my daily words!! These links were composed on whims weeks back and yet despite htese gargantuan lists, some people I like very much appear nowhere at all! I sincerely apologize aobut this. One thing I must say is this: there's no snobbery here. If you want to be listed
- in whatever category - just ask me and I'll put you down. Also, if you know any good sites, I'm always on the lookout for these, whether they be great photoblogs, suicide prevention sites or whatever ... Originally I was blogging elsewhere and built up a huge roll of drugs awareness stuff. Then I came to Blogger and, not knowing how properly to arranage my sidebar until two weeks or so ago - literally none of this stuff's been transferred the way it was always intended to be. Please bear with me on this. I seem to live between bedbound depressions and the rest of it and anything that does not fit inside my hugely restrictive routines I find very difficult to engage with at all at times. I can't explain the hows and whys I'm afraid.

But basically, as long as I make it to the end of each day; I think I've reason enough to be happy!

***

WHAT PLANET IS GEORGE MICHAEL living on? In an interview with our highest-selling newspaper's colour magazine, News of the World: Sunday

to the question

You finish touring in July so is a summer (gay) wedding on the cards?

He replies:

"When this tour is over and everything has died down we can think about that. Like me, Kenny wants our day to be special. I'd take no pleasure in entering a civil partnership if there was any publicity around it."

O! George! Come on!! You choose to continue a carer in the music industry and continue to affect distain for any publicity - which is an absolute contradiction in terms as far as I'm concerned. George, if you genuinely feel this way, take my straightforward advice and do not publicize your wedding by mentioning it in mass-market interviews!

Then - diddums - you won't have to worry about upsetting yourself later on ...