Bye Bye Blackbird

Stephen Alexander: 

Bye Bye Blackbird (2025) [1]

 

'The blackbird cannot stop his song ... 

It takes place in him, even though all his race was yesterday destroyed.' [2]

 

 

Like many other birds once common in back gardens across the UK, the blackbird is now rarely seen or heard; populations in England, particularly in urban areas, have been in sharp decline during recent years, with some reports indicating a shocking 40% drop in numbers in London since 2018.

 

So I was particularly saddened to find the body of a young male blackbird lying dead by the roadside, with a deep wound ripped across his breast (hard to blame such an injury on the Usutu virus). 

 

Is there, you might ask, any point in reflecting upon the bloody remnants of a feathered creature lying exposed in this way; of taking a photograph of what Lawrence describes as the ragged horror of a bird claimed by death and passing into darkness? 

 

I think so: not because I wish to aestheticise the moment or fetishise violence and suffering. But because I think there is a connection between him and me and by memorialising this blackbird in the only way I know how (with words and images), perhaps it allows his song to echo for just a bit longer.     

 

Notes

 

[1] The artwork features a photo of a dead blackbird by the roadside superimposed on the cover of the sheet music for the song 'Bye Bye Blackbird', published in 1926 by Jerome H. Remick, written by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 23.  

On the Whistling of Birds at Midnight

Image taken from Cathy Fisher's blog: Diary of an Account Manager

It's 'round midnight: but I can't sleep.

The robin who seems to live in my mother's back garden is singing still and, of all the sounds in the world, I love best the whistling of birds; more than whale song and more than even the most accomplished human voice. 

Thus, when there's a robin still filling the air with his silvery sound of defiance and affirmation, I'll always lend an ear to listen, whatever the hour. As Lawrence says, the song just bubbles through them, as if they were little fountain-heads of vitality and new creation.

But the question arises as to why the city-living robins have taken to nighttime singing; they are not naturally nocturnal birds, like nightingales, even if they like to sing well into the evening as the sun sets. 

The experts seem undecided. They used to think it was due to the increase in noise during the day - that the birds literally couldn't hear themselves think (or in this case sing) above the roar of traffic. But now the consensus seems to be that the real problem is light pollution; that it's no longer dark enough for our feathered friends to know when night has fallen and it's time to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. 

Either way, it can't be much fun being an urban robin; trapped in a perpetual electric twilight and forced to endure a constant hubbub during the day. Their numbers, unlike other species of once common garden birds, may not (so far) be declining, but they must be constantly exhausted, poor things.

How long will it be, I wonder, before something of this fatigue creeps into their song?

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 19-24.