Tunable Silver on My Father's Birthday

". . . And shall we leap the trees as light as birds?" 

(from A Nest of Birds by Theodore Roethke)

Tui - Parson's bird. Photograph: Doug Beynon. 

Today is my father's seventy-ninth birthday. 79 is a grand number, I think.

Dad took this photograph of my resident tui sipping sugar water from the coconut chalice that hangs in my front garden. Not really someone wired to sit still for very long, Dad  demonstrates enormous patience out in nature, especially when it comes to birds. When he and Mum last came out to New Zealand, he would spend many happy hours (often with his camera at hand) sitting contentedly on the porch or out in the garden observing the antics of the native birds. 

According to the ornithologist, W. H. Oliver, the bellbird was undoubtedly the chief performer in the chorus described by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook entered Queen Charlotte Sound during the first voyage of discovery. “I was awakened by the singing of the birds ashore, from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile. Their numbers were certainly very great. They seemed to strain their throats with emulation, and made, perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells, but with the most tunable silver imaginable. . .”

How perfectly Banks described the song of the bellbird - korimako - a small, spirited, olive-green treasure with an unforgettable voice. Each morning, when I open up the front door and head outside to feed the birds, the same little creature launches ebulliently into song. I reply with my raspy-by-comparison greeting. We've been doing this for a couple of years now; it's become so much a part of our daily ritual that he has graciously copy/pasted my paltry two note offering into his personal repertoire. Imagine that. . .  These days (and Dad, this little anecdote is especially for you), when I head out on my walks around the neighbourhood or down to the jetty, I call to him and he answers from the treetops. Oh, my heart. What  sweetness there is in this daily 'call and answer' conversation with this dear, listening bird. A daily miracle, really.  

Mum and Dad loved waking to the bellbird's song while they were here; so I'm re-posting a short recording I made some time ago when the birds and I were still practicing our 'tunable silver' ritual. Dad, herewith your Happy Birthday anthem. . .  

One last little ditty. . . Back home in the UK, my parents live in a home surrounded by orchards, hops farms and woodlands, so yes, their garden is year-round home to a large population of birds. This pheasant and his wife are regular visitors. Considering their very great age (ha - just teasing), my parents are actually pretty savvy when it comes to computers (Mum even has a laptop and Skype!) so it was no surprise when Dad named this handsome and audacious fellow Broadband?! Broadband, you ask? Yes - Broadband. Don't you just love it?! It hadn't occurred to me till now that Bluetooth might suit the pheasant's wife nicely. . .  

Broadband - 'Dad's' pheasant - Raggleswood, Kent. 

Photograph: Doug Beynon

Dad crossing the Hooker River per suspension bridge, Mount Cook Reserve, NZ 2009

Dawn Chorus

Meet our native Bellbird - Korimako - a spirited little olive-green treasure with an unforgettable voice.

This is the song I wake to each morning -

Stills photograph - Pam Russell

Bellbird song recorded at dawn on the front steps of 22.

According to the ornithologist, W. H. Oliver, the bellbird was undoubtedly the chief performer in the chorus described by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook entered Queen Charlotte Sound during the first voyage of discovery. “I was awakened by the singing of the birds ashore, from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile. Their numbers were certainly very great. They seemed to strain their throats with emulation, and made, perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells, but with the most tunable silver imaginable, to which, may be, the distance was no small addition.”

And - for its mention of skin, rain, time and a stone that rang like a bell - a favourite Neruda poem...

TOO MANY NAMES

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

and the week with the whole year.

Time cannot be cut

with your exhausted scissors,

and all the names of the day

are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,

nobody is Rosa or Maria,

all of us are dust or sand,

all of us are rain under rain.

They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

of Chiles and Paraguays;

I have no idea what they are saying.

I know only the skin of the earth

and I know it has no name.

When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than the flowers did,

and when I spoke to a stone

it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring

which goes on all winter.

Time lost its shoes.

A year lasts four centuries.

When I sleep every night,

what am I called or not called?

And when I wake, who am I

if I was not I when I slept?

This means to say that scarcely

have we landed into life

than we come as if new-born;

let us not fill our mouths

with so many faltering names,

with so many sad formalities,

with so many pompous letters,

with so much of yours and mine,

with so much signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,

write them up, make them new-born,

mix them up, undress them,

until all light in the world

has the oneness of the ocean,

a generous, vast wholeness,

a crackling, living fragrance.