The utterly beguiling song of summer that makes my heart soar

... as chirruped each dawn by the blackbird who dares answer back to Radio 4’s grand inquisitor

We all probably nurture deep inside us the urge to rebel occasionally — if only to prove to ourselves that we are not completely slaves to the rules and regulations and requirements that govern our lives.

Maybe we picture ourselves explaining very gently to the boss why the entire office thinks he makes David Brent look like an inspirational manager and it would be better for everyone if he were to resign immediately and find a job more suited to his talents — preferably somewhere in the Outer Hebrides. assuming the sheep will tolerate him.

Or maybe the moment of rebellion comes after half an hour of sitting in a theatre in cowed silence watching the drama that all the right-on critics have hailed as a piece of ground-breaking, truth-telling realism when all you really want is to be entertained.

You stand up in your seat — or preferably on your seat — turn to face the audience and in the loudest voice you can muster you proclaim: ‘This is pretentious tosh and I’m going home to watch the telly with a glass of decent wine instead of waiting for the interval, paying ten quid for some undrinkable plonk and having to listen to all you posers in the bar pretending that you’ve actually been enjoying it!’

I experience my rebellious moment quite often at this time of the year. It doesn’t, I’m sorry to admit, last long, but it happens just before the sun has risen and london is at its most silent.

No traffic, no rumble of trains in the distance, no jets roaring overhead or children screaming in the nearby park or thoughtless idiots blasting music through the open windows of their cars.

I open my front door, take the few steps down the path to the car waiting to whisk me off to New Broadcasting House to present Radio 4’s Today programme and hesitate for just a moment before getting in and burying myself in the morning papers waiting on the back seat.

That is when I become aware of the sound that makes me want to tell the driver I’m terribly sorry he’s been troubled, but I won’t be going into the BBC today. Then, in my dreams, I text my editor, apologise for the inconvenience and retreat to my back garden to spend the next hour listening to the greatest sound the natural world has to offer.

It is the dawn chorus. every morning it is different and every morning I tell myself it can’t get better than this and every morning it does.

Sadly, I can’t pretend to be an expert at identifying bird song, but if you listen often enough for long enough you get to spot that some birds wake up earlier than others. Funnily enough, the ones that start the dawn chorus are also the ones that eat worms — which perhaps goes to prove the old saying about early birds.

The robin, always one of the earliest, is joined by any song thrushes that happen to be about. Soon after come the wrens and warblers. all of their songs different. all of them wonderful.

BUT I have saved the best till last. The best and first of the birds to shatter the silence of the night — though ‘shatter’ is the opposite of what he does.

It is, of course, the incomparable blackbird.

Perhaps if my neighbourhood had a resident nightingale I might take a different view, but to my ear there is no sound more beautiful than a blackbird in full voice — and I include the opening movement of the elgar cello concerto as played by my son Christopher at his very first concert as solo cellist almost half a century ago.

Perhaps the word memorable best fits that performance.

So wonderful is the blackbird that I nominated it as our national bird when there was a countrywide poll a couple of years ago. It was beaten into second place by the robin.

I don’t deny that the robin has a beguiling high-pitched song, but it has always seemed to me an unlikely music maker.

Mischief maker might be more appropriate — always on the lookout for a bit of aggro if he spots a potential competitor.

I expected trouble a few days ago when a young robin came to perch on the back of my garden bench and the regular old bruiser of a robin arrived. Instead of seeing off his territorial rival, he sidled up to him and dropped a small worm in his mouth. Very touching — presumably father and son — but I don’t suppose it will be too long before the son is banished or goes elsewhere in search of a mate.

The great naturalist Simon Barnes rose even higher in my esteem when he, too, suggested it is the blackbird that deserves to be our national bird.

unlike me, Simon is an expert, so when he says that if you spent your life listening to birds singing round the world you would be hard- pressed to find one to compete with the blackbird, you have to take note.

He describes its song as ‘relaxed, effortless, flowing’, and he used a wonderful image: ‘ The bird seems to be leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets as he whistles.’

every year I fear my own blackbird and his kin will leave my garden for richer pickings elsewhere, but I’ve been in this house for 20 years and they’re still here and sounding more glorious than ever.

I like to pretend that a special relationship has developed between us over the years, even though I know that can’t really be true given the blackbird’s lifespan is between three and four years.

But who’s to say that one of mine won’t match the record of the blackbird which was still famously singing away at the age of 21? Pretty unlikely, but I like to think we have formed a bond over the years, however many different generations have come and gone.

Blackbirds are not pushy in the way a robin is. I’ve yet to have one perch on my spade handle or even, as one robin did recently, on my shoe when I was stretched out reading. But they’re pretty fearless. They even tolerate my anger.

I occasionally rush out into the garden screaming abuse at the wretched wood pigeons which arrive in squadrons and waddle around hoovering up every seed in sight if you let them. They fly off, of course, and so do the other birds.

But the pigeons stay away for at least a few hours while the blackbird and his brood retreat to the nearest tree, wait for me to calm down, and return within minutes.

There is something that has puzzled me this spring and summer. One of them has definitely changed his tune. For as long as I can remember he has sung the same fluting melody at roughly the same time every afternoon.

He has, I imagine, feasted well in the daytime on the worms he digs from my lawn and the bits of apple I throw out for him by way of dessert after the meat course.

That’s when he leaves the lawn for his favourite song post — the television aerial on the roof — and breaks into song.

THE repertoire is gloriously varied, but the melody he repeated most often was always something like this: five notes, with the second rising, the third and fourth falling and the fifth rising again to match the first.

But no longer. I catch a hint of it occasionally, but the tunes are definitely different from last year.

I used to have great fun whistling the familiar call and the bird responding. It may, of course, have been coincidence, but I like to think we were having some sort of conversation. Now I have zero chance of replicating any of his new, more complex tunes. Which may be why he’s done it. He’s simply had enough of me.

Perhaps he just didn’t like being mimicked by a human who got thrown out of his church choir after his first choir practice because, said, the choirmaster, he was so tone deaf he put the rest of the choristers off. Very hurtful. Wrong, too. Decades later I hired a singing teacher who told me being tone deaf is vanishingly unusual. If you can tell the difference in the ping when you knock a spoon against a glass that’s half empty and then one that’s full, you are not tone deaf. But it doesn’t mean you’re a brilliant singer. Which takes us back to our songbirds.

Real experts like Simon tell us birds can and do change their tunes and their pitch to compete, sometimes with traffic noise in the city but also with each other — the more complex a blackbird’s set of tunes, the more attractive he might be to a potential mate.

as Simon says, life doesn’t get much better than hearing two competing blackbirds engaged in a duel from different songposts.

and, glory of glories, guess what we found high up in the jasmine a few weeks ago: a nest with four perfect blackbird eggs. I wanted to raise my voice to the heavens in thanks. But perhaps best leave that to the blackbirds.