I opened my eyes on our first morning in the house this trip to the dull grey early morning skies that heralded a wet day and realised that the air was filled with birdsong.  Not the occasional cheep-cheep-cheeping of sparrows and their ilk.  Someone out there, not very far away from the sound of it, was singing a song of such joy that it was impossible not to feel cheerful – in spite of the hour.

I slid out of bed so as not to disturb Graham as he receovered from the miseries of a red-eye in “cattle class”, tiptoed down the ladder from the sleeping loft and opened the door to the terrace.  An absolute cacophany of bird song greeted my ears.

The bird responsible for the early morning ode to joy revealved himself as a glossy blackbird perched on the TV antenna of the Presbytry, but he was most definitly not alone in his song.    What a happy sound!

Twenty years of living in the tropics has me unused to birdsong.  It isn’t that we don’t have birds, or that they don’t sing.  It is just that one has to be a very early riser to hear them.  There is plenty of birdsong before dawn but, as the day gets hotter there is less and less song to be heard.  In the summer months the black-headed gulls fill the air with their raucous cries and one occasionally hears the croak of a night heron but, for the most part, our birds in the Caribbean aren’t songbirds.

So it was with great pleasure that I stood barefoot on the cold tiles and drank in the sounds of spring that filled the air.  When Graham stirred I turned on the kettle and prepared the inevitable jolt of caffeine that is required to get a humbuggy half-awake man to resemble something/someone prepared to navigate his way through the mixed joys of DIY shops and French all day long.  Graham staggered out onto the terrace to inhale his coffee and paused as he heard the birdsong.

He quickly identified the blackbird who was too cheerful for his own good and then set about trying to identify the other songs in the mix.  All too quickly we realised that we have been out of Europe for such a long time that blackbirds and pigeons excepted,we’ve forgotten most of the bird songs.  However, that didn’t stop us enjoying it.

Our first house guest, my sister Anna, was due out the following week so a quick email requesting the purchase of a good book on European birds was made.  She duly arrived with an excellent RSPB guide to European birds as a housewarming present and Graham set himself aside a few minutes a couple of times a day to identifying the birds and their songs.  Now we need binoculars!  However, the big pair that sit on top of a filing cabinet in the office in Tortola are seldom used so they will comprise some of our luggage for the next trip.