Blackbirds in Collioure: Le Merle

 with Suzanne Dunaway

A shiny, blue-black merle is drinking from our terrace birdbath, throwing back his little orange beak and enjoying the cool water on this very hot day at the end of May.

 

Friends who came yesterday to see the garden and have a glass of wine informed me that the French merle is called a blackbird (turdus merula) in Canada, England and God knows where else, but here in France, a merle is a merle, and they sing as if it is their only purpose in life aside from pulling long, juicy worms from the base of the artichokes.  Surely their collection of notes is a delight for us morning and evening, and they never, ever sing the same song twice. Perhaps a good lesson for us from time to time. Try to change one’s tune from time to time.

Our garden has been honoured by a pair of blackbirds/merles for almost two years now. In the beginning, I watched jealously as they swooped and sang in my neighbour’s garden, a magical piece of land that has been planted since his great-great-grandfather’s era.

If I could have seen the raised eyebrow on our first merle, I might have known that he was casing the joint. Were we responsible/kindly/bird-feeding/non-violent/appreciators of such an important member of spring’s orchestra? Did we have salivating cats or lurking dogs? Did we really know that dried toasts with seeds are preferable to those made from plain, white bread? And would we revel in and appreciate his skilful warblings as does our neighbour, a thoughtful man who once, after having found a poor little merle with a twisted beak unable to forage for his dinner in the earth, dug the worms himself and left them on the soil where they were instantly accessible. The little merle followed him through the garden, never leaving his side.

Listening to our talented merle, I thought to talk back, to imitate the crazy notes of his original songs, hoping to communicate, to make him know just how much he brightens my mornings and evenings. After every trill, I whistled back, following his notes as well as could be expected from a lowly human, and he continued to sing. Each song he produced was more complicated than the previous one, and I found myself trying harder and harder to follow his merle melodies, sort of like dueling banjos, only done with whistles.

After several minutes of what I thought was a lovely dialogue, he really let me have it—a song so rich with whistles, warbles and trills that I finally surrendered to the master.

“Ok,” I said to our merle, “it’s all yours now; just go at it and show me what you can do.”

I thought about my propensity to want to interact with almost everything, even merles, to talk with everyone I meet when perhaps he or she might wish only to get on with a busy day, to offer solutions for friends’ complaints, when all they really want, and need, is an ear or a shoulder to take some of the weight of their troubles. I thought about how many times our merle has shown me his world through music, perhaps even a ‘thank-you’ for his daily breadcrumbs, his clean water supply, his fat earthworms that thrive on my compost, his straw from my mulch with which to build nests. And I thought, “Perhaps it’s a bit arrogant to try to sing with a merle, king of the garden, right up there with a nightingale. Perhaps this merle is really trying to help me learn yet another lesson.”

And so I did something different the next morning when his beautiful music began.

I just listened.

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE WRITER

Suzanne Dunaway loves “cooking and painting, gardening, singing, playing the piano, her husband’s ex-wife, her two very individual step-children and six step-grandchildren, and she has strong opinions about cooking with indiscriminate dry spices, sprouted garlic, or green peppers, and ordering cappuccino in Italy after 10AM.”
She regularly shares with P-O Life readers her PO-inspired culinary creations.

With many strings to her bow, she is also an artist and columnist, with two published cookbooks and a talented and exciting writer.
Get a copy of her ‘No Need to Knead: Handmade Artisan Breads in 90 Minutes’ here  
Or her 5 star rated book ‘Rome, at Home: The Spirit of La Cucina Romana in Your Own Kitchen’ here

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SUZANNE

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