Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Blackcap sings in the old gumtree...

This is hardly David Attenborough, I know; it's terribly wobbly, keeping a hand steady enough for this amount of zoom and the camera pointed upward was rather more than I could manage, and the sound quality is only middling.  It's  also ridiculously high definition and took an age to upload to Youtube - I need to work out how to shrink videos, or how to quickly adjust the camera settings so they don't come out so enormous.

But for all that,  I am nevetheless quite pleased with the capture.  We must have had these little chaps around before, I think I've heard the song and Tom says he saw one at the bird table in the winter, but I've never been aware of them so present and visible in the garden, nor been able to get such a sustained view of one while I had the camera with me.  I've heard the blackcap is sometimes known as the northern nightingale, which may be a somewhat grandiose claim, but he's certainly putting his heart into it. 





(There are some better videos of blackcaps and other warblers available alongside on Youtube if you care to follow them.  My other nature nerd activities of late have revolved around a colony of very small mining bees and their cleptoparasitic cohorts, but they're really too small to photograph, so I'll spare you this year's insect obsession, though they are more endearing than hornets...)

12 comments:

the polish chick said...

how lovely, it certainly does sound like spring.

earlybird said...

This was a joy to watch! Well done.

Roderick Robinson said...

I was all set to add a wounding coda to your horribly vulnerable: "This is hardly David Attenborough...", implying it had something in common with those less ambitious though ultimately more whimsical programmes created by that weird German couple who appeared on telly in the B&W days. But, fatally, I then pressed the button. Apart from being able to see the "little brown bird" (the bane of my intermittent twitching career, given my lack of expertise and my failing sight) in the first place, you made a decent fist of recording its twittering. But that was not all. Throughout, the picture swayed gently and it was like picking up your heart-beat, causing me to go down with a severe attack of intimacy.

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of sentimentality, as Falstaff almost said.

Fire Bird said...

weird the way his throat feathers move as he sings - he's certainly giving it his all

Dale said...

"... a severe attack of intimacy."

That made me laugh, O venerable Bonden. Yes, exactly.

Lucy said...

Steady on boys! Having looked at it again in the light of the Venerable Bonden's observations (he hath an epithet, nice one Dale!), I think if that were the rhythm of my heartbeat I would be in need of a defibrillator or some such...

Was that German couple Mickaela and someone?

Anyway. glad you all enjoyed it in your own ways!

herhimnbryn said...

Ah, you have made me crave birdsong other than magpies. He is working so hard to send out his song.

G.M. Hopkins would have been entranced....

Your bird and my Roo, I think David A. should watch out!

Rouchswalwe said...

Oh sweet song of spring! Merci, Lucy.

marly youmans said...

Winter has gone on too long this year--lovely to hear.

Anil P said...

Such a nice voice. Sounds like a country brook gurgling along as it meanders about.

The closest I can come to drawing a parallel with the singing is with the Bulbuls back here. They too have a black crown but pointed, and one variety has a red bottom.

HKatz said...

Lovely video.

"Blackcap singing in eucalyptus" sounds like it could be the name of a poem too :)

Crafty Green Poet said...

oh lovely to watch and to listen to! Blackcaps are one of my favourite spring songsters and there are plenty of them around Edinburgh!

I'm just starting to do make videos and I'm also wondering how to make them smaller, they are so enormous and take so long to download or anything...