Postscript
Dun roamin'
P. J. Kavanagh
4A ccentors are small grey and brown
..thin-billed birds of retiring habits.' Not a very exciting description of a bird that fascinates me, and for some reason moves me: the hedge-accentor, dunnock or hedge-sparrow. It is in appearance indeed undistinguished and creeps about the bot- toms of hedges, mouse-like, the colour of earth and dead leaves. One often mistakes it for a mouse. But it can perch and it can sing, for it isn't a sparrow at all.
It is the song that is surprising. Sometimes here it is the only song there is, at morning and evening, and it is very thin, but melodious and varied. Listening to it, I have had a sense of a thin needle-like beak emitting these thin thread-like notes and it seems to be stitching, or embroidering, the beginnings and ends of the day, sewing dawn onto morning, evening onto night. This is fanciful, and I apologise, but I can- not get the idea out of my mind. It is a celebratory, tidy bird.
Why anything quite so subfuse, secretive and dun-coloured should hold my attention so completely I do not know. (`Dunnock' is apparently a country name for any small brown bird.) Grey and brown, it is like the paintings of Gwen John, which also move me. I suppose, to discover why, I should have to psychoanalyse myself, and this is not the place. Even Mr Geoffrey Grigson, a generous observer, characterises its song as `without strength or urgency or courage' whereas I find it stuffed (discreetly) with
The Spectator 28 April 1984 quantities of all three. Maybe I am Itickt,Y with my hedge-sparrows — an old b°c:. says it has been known to imitate the nightingale (another undistinguished' looker) and that is what, recently, they have been reminding me of. I was sitting outside just now, watching a pair of them courting (or two cocks rock. fighting, I am no ornithologist). They new at each other, or flew side by side, altering course simultaneously, fast as fly-catchers' with an intention-transference as quick ads an electric current. Then they perched all: gave vent to this extraordinary, and at this season powerful and varied, song. I Pointe this out to my companion, a visitor frotil London, and he was less interested tilarlA.Id' preoccupied with his own affairs. This `,,,;; not make me superior to him (except in 1",. pleasure in the moment), there would be other occasions when he was interested an I was not, but it would not be in hedge- sparrows. I asked myself why did I derive such particular, serious and to me sigailini' cant pleasure and at that inenne,„-t remembered, with sinking heart, that a r11.71, from the BBC is coming this evening, m Gerald Priestland, to record my iniPt°,0tIlie% to contribution to a programme c' something like 'Why I believe in God'. d I have been avoiding such occasions an questions all my life, preferring to roam t",, bottom of hedges, dun-coloure'e (sometimes singing, but not so as OP% would notice). Besides, the question, alio any answer that could be summoned, is invitation to impertinence. I have a PictlIre Gofopdufofinng my beliefmheylicehfesttnanhdticlongwrahtitilelatt..ieg Almighty, viewing me with a glazed and in Almighty, eye, says briefly `Ta' and turn ,„ something, someone, more interesting. Up to now, faced with such questions, I haw always pleaded the fifth amendment, Li I willing to incriminate myself. For how earld explain it is a feeling, not a thought' of that the feeling is precise, though it catnips be precisely expressed? That it something to do with the pleasure I aril ?P'is ting from the hedge-sparrows — that it
the pleasure? • or For I know that our reason is as tin
tant as our emotion. I admire the all who have classified the dunnock as an Ai centor, rescued it from being just a sillh;e brown bird. I am told that in Arabic t,se, are only two names for a flower — and 'onion'. Distinctions, eategr;ut thought, add to our capacity for rp aise•o what definitions am Ito offer Mr Priestlash°, and his microphone, trapped into it by a ;0, ly civic sense that it was time I dun or arn lthedege the greatgarnedataltuelakstopfemrcyhed to ad'o' _ stiLis probably sound 'sweet' and :bchelaiermr?itiltg'.__asj etmimaeys ddiofficuwIht certainly dangerous, because it canbetaken_ he away. I shall have to try and remernberal; defiant-sounding hedge-sparrow.coarlY ,earehadsthiet is fierce aa,_ art' lie
remember, also, that it lays P to beautiful eggs most attractive
the grout'
cuckoo, who turfs them onto expreson
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