Birding behind the wire.

[Owen]

From The Fortress by Raleigh Trevelyan.

The birds seem strangely indifferent to the general racket.
A wren is constantly flitting about in the bush behind us, and nightinglaes sing both day and night.
At dawn we hear a cuckoo.

I shall never again be able to listen to nightingales with pleasure.
They will always remind me of the Fortress.
Little did Keats know how the meaning of his words could be applied:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death-

This is Keats coutry without a doubt. Verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

But however much these blasted birds trirrup and gurgle, they'll never make me fell that it will be rich to die in the Fossa della Cogna, pain or no pain.
Nightingales are supposed to sing when alarmed; the cock bird is trying to attract intruders away from the nest.
Certainly the noiser things are here, the more they sing.
At first we were entranced by them, but now they MADDEN us.....

[4th wilts]

redstarts are members of the turdidae,or thrush family.i have also seen them in my garden,and i have seen 1 oriole in 11yrs in wiltshire.yours,lee