Sing on, sweet bird

An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds

- Mark Cocker

IT has been suggested that humans are hardwired to respond positively to other animals with rounded shapes that mimic those of our babies. Such creatures, runs the argument, are inadvertent beneficiaries of our parenting instinct and thus enjoy greater public affection. We can see it at work perhaps in the popularity of hedgehogs, puffins and owls.

I wonder if it helps explain our attachment to thrushes? The birds can puff themselves out until they look like spheres with tails. Not only are their shapes rounded, but four of the six British species bear spots upon their pot- bellied breasts. They are rounded in both shape and in pattern.

One thing we know— they stand among the most beloved of British birds. I have known people so intimate with individual thrushes in their gardens that the birds would enter the houses to feed or take food from the hand. One local friend has had the same female blackbird nest in his garden for six years. Not only can he recognise her, but she knows him and she calls him specifically when she wishes to be fed. Often, the relationships are ongoing, passed down between generations of the same bird family.

There is some ecological evidence to suggest that our affections for thrushes are reciprocated. The blackbird is arguably the most popular of all, but it was originally an inhabitant of pristine forest, to which its mellifluous song is sonically adapted. Blackbird vocalisations have a low fre- quency and such sounds carry better through the dense foliage of wooded environments. Yet blackbirds have, in part, forsaken forest. Their favourite sites now— the places where they achieve their highest breeding densities—are suburban gardens.

We love them and, it seems, they, in turn, love to live alongside us.