Sunday 15 January 2012

January - what represents this month for you?

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we will be having a prompt this month about what says 'January' to you. Different parts of the world will have different answers. In the months to come, you can be thinking about something for that particular month.

You can just post a photo and let the image speak for itself. Or, you can tell a little story about why you chose a certain thing to stand for January. Please use the label January when you publish your post. We try to keep the labels list easy for people to search through, so we only have the label for the prompt and not people's names or other titles.

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So, to start off...
To me Blackbirds are January birds! Why? I hear you say.
Here is a photo from a couple winters ago. It is one of my friendly blackbirds enjoying a top up under the feeder. Actually this is the female blackbird which is a dark brown colour. The male is black with a bright yellow bill.
You can listen to some of their songs here. When they get going along with the Robins, it is magical!

I love blackbird song. They actually start singing very lovely songs towards the end of the old year and beginning of the new. When I visited here in January 1987, I didn't know who was singing, but loved the song. I called them "January Birds". It seemed to me that they did a great job of waking the sun up every morning. As I went back from that visit engaged and have come to make England my home, they are part of that magical time for me. It took me quite a few years to discover it was the blackbirds who were singing so well.

This year it has been warm enough to have the window open a bit at night. Wonderful to hear them singing their hearts out! and also as I am looking back just a bit more to that time 25 years ago, it is a lovely memory.

I was a bit ashamed to discover this was my only blackbird photo. I am going to try to get a photo of the blackbirds in my neighbourhood this January. If I can, I will edit this post and add the new photo.