Monday 9 March 2015


Brother Driblystick

I have noticed a strange phenomenon over the last few weeks.

There have been birds singing all through the night, which is not at all normal.

After doing some research I found the most likely maker of these night time twitters is the Robin. Nightingale's are also night singers but are currently residing in Africa, so it won't be them, unless there is a family here who lost their passports. We must therefore return to Mr Robin.

After consulting "The Birdictionary" by Brother Jasper (1762), I found some interesting facts about birds.

Birds do not have a larynx like us, they instead have a syrinx. This is effectively like having a double larynx. A Thrush can sing two things at once, it can even sing an ascending note and a descending note at the same time.

A European Wren can sing 740 different notes in one minute.

After many nights of research I found what I was looking for. Brother Jasper had dedicated a whole chapter to the night singing of Robin's.

It turns out that Brother Jasper was blessed with the gift to understanding the language of birds and spent many nights under the stars trying to deduce what the Robin's were talking about at night.

He found that the Robin's would spend an hour or so talking about how nice it was to be able to talk without the noise of all the other birds. They would also recount stories of things they had seen humans doing, though they referred to us as "Honkers".

At this point Brother Jasper's tone became somewhat more serious. He learned that the Robin's were plotting the downfall of human civilisation. They would try to come up with a plan to remove "Honker's" from their otherwise peaceful world. It turns out that none of the plans discussed were very practical or satisfactory so they agreed to try again the following night. After studying the Robin's night meetings, Brother Jasper decided they posed no threat at all as they showed a lack of strategic thought and hands. They also suffered from shocking powers of recall, often forgetting what they had spoken about the night before.

Though it seems that Robin's pose no immediate threat, I shall venture out at night with a touch more trepidation than before.

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