Postcard from... Normandy

Oh, to be in Normandy now that April’s here. The apple trees are a mass of blossom. The finest grassland in the world is enamelled or, according to your taste, disfigured by the yellow splashes of rape fields.

When I was a child in North Staffordshire, the song thrush was of one of the most common birds in the garden. In seven years of monitoring the birds in my garden in the Norman hills, I had briefly glimpsed only two until now.

More than a week ago, a male song thrush took up residence. He began to sing his repertoire of love songs, repeating them. Or as the 19th-century poet Thomas Browning put it more elegantly:

“… he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!”

No fewer than 4.5 million song thrushes are shot each year by French hunters. Despite this annual massacre, thrush numbers in France – unlike in Britain – are said to be growing.

More than a week later, he is still there. His voice is so powerful I can hear him clearly from inside the house, from 7am until 9pm. And after almost 10 days of constant crooning his call has seemingly been left unanswered.