Birdsong Bagatelles-Edward Cowie

Birdsong Bagatelles (Quartet No.5)-Edward Cowie
Kreutzer Quartet (Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Mihailo Trandafilovski, Morgan Goff, Neil Heyde)
Unedited Session Outtakes 23 9 15 St John the Baptist Aldbury
Engineer Jonathan Haskell

Grey Heron

….brancher, crane, diddleton, frank, ern, frog-eater, harn, harnser, harnsey, hegrie, yern, yarn, varn, tammie herl, skiphegrie, ooze bird…

Mute Swan

I will play the swan,
And die in music

(Othello, Act 5, Scene 2)

Coot

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.(Tennyson ‘The Brook’)

Mallard

Black-headed Gull

‘one day about AD550 the blackheaded gulls, flying as usual along the coast of Wales, found floating in a Coracle, a human baby a day or two old ….’ (the finding of St Kenneth)

Kingfisher

‘Expect Martin’s summer, halcyon days’ (Henry VI, Act 1, Scene 2)

Wren

…Bobby wren, chitty, crackadee, Cracket, crackeys, crackil, cuddy, cut, cutteley wren, cutty, gilliver wren, guradnan, Jenny, jitty, juggy wren, titmeg, two fingers….

Robin

 

‘Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren/since o’er shady groves they hover,/and with leaves and flowers do cover/The friendless bodies of dead men’ (John Webster-The White Devil)

 

Song Thrush

Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,

More coiled steel than living-a poised

Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs

Triggered to stirrings beyond sense – with a start, a bounce,  a stab

Over take the instant and drag out some writhing thing … (Ted Hughes, ‘Thrushes’)

 

Chaffinch

…apple bird, whitewing, binkie, wet chaff, charbob, tree lintie, chay, spink, chink chink, flackie, shelier applie…

Blue Tit

‘Withering things they ackimules: they ought to be kicked to flames.’ (Henry Williamson, ‘Tarka the Otter)

 

Wood Pigeon

“permitted under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) to be ‘killed by authorised persons at all times”

Cuckoo

 

Green Woodpecker

 

Bullfinch

 

Jay 

 

Tawny Owl

 

Rook

Kestrel

Lapwing

 

Grey Partridge

 

The partridge makes no nest but on the ground

Lays many eggs and I have often found

Sixteen or seventeen in a beaten seat

When tracing o’er the fields or weeding wheat

The lay in furrows or an old land rig

Brown as the pheasant only not so big

They’re often found by pasture boys at play

And by the weeders often ta’en away

The boys will often throw the eggs abroad

And stay and play at blind eggs on the road

They lay in any hole without a nest

And oft a horse’s footing pleases best

And there they safely like till weeders come

When boys half fill their hats and take them home (John Clare ‘The Partridge’s Nest’)

Skylark

To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet

Farewell nobility; let his grace go forward

And dare us with his cap like larks. (Henry VIII, Act 3, Scene 2)

Magpie

 

Augurs and understood relations have

By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth

The secret’st man of blood. (Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4)