This is the post I meant to put up yesterday, but life got in the way a little bit…

Today, for the first time this year, I heard the voice of the male blackbird. During the spring and early summer one hears them constantly, and they certainly sing away in the dead of night. But by late summer they quiet down and the only noise that I at least can hear them make is a rustling around in the leaves. As I was returning from the post office yesterday I stopped to watch a female blackbird in the hopes of getting a good shot of her (I didn’t) when I heard the familiar voice of the male for a brief few seconds in the bush. Like a jolt it transported me to spring! Afterwards I came across these snowdrops and the daffodil shoots pictured above and was firmly convinced that spring might actually be a possibility. A week ago I wouldn’t have been so sure.

On my way to the post office I saw a few more “common” birds that I still haven’t mentioned on this blog.  First were a number of starlings near the S-Bahn tracks. Starlings rarely come to the yard by my building for some reason, so I tend to forget about them. They don’t seem to build such enormous flocks here as they do in the states and are better mixed with the general population, being in their native habitat. I also saw a green finch in the Kleiner Tiergarten and a chaffinch right outside my building. I know that these finches are always around, but I rarely see them. While standing outside my building staring at the trees through my binoculars I got a bunch of strange looks from my neighbors, who also scared off the finches, so I went inside to watch them from my kitchen window undisturbed. There I also had the pleasure of watching a little nuthatch crawl all around his linden tree, poking at it with his little beak.