Blackbirds, Gazza, Boulangère and 8217 Lookout Mountain
Abundance: Tuesday 5 March 2024
Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take this busy brain and make it still.
4.54AM.
Third day in a row.
Is the blackbird calling me awake, or am I just waking up and there he is?
Years ago, I asked a friend who knows much about birds how she could distinguish between them all; how could their flight or song instantly identify them? You’d recognise Maradona or Gascoigne on the pitch without seeing their face - she told me - it’s as easy with birds if you get to know them.
Downloading Merlin to my phone has been revelatory: at first, being able to confirm that the bird you are listening to is a this-in-particular brings its own thrill, but quickly it builds a small bank of knowledge - robins, chiffchaffs, thrushes and more - that bring the characters of that background chatter into my world. It’s like hearing muffled voices as you approach a pub become recognisable when you step through the door.
Of course, in all this avian chatter I don’t know what anyone’s saying, but in the scheme of pub conversation I know it’s Bob talking over the general hubbub or Charlotte who has just joined the conversation.
Opening the door has made me even more inquisitive.
I discover that even ahead of the classic dawn chorus that arrives later this month it’s often blackbirds that wake to sing while other birds snooze on, and often them singing longest into dusk. Earliest of all at this time of year - and often in the dark, black night - the young males sing to establish the territory they hope will be theirs for the rest of their days1; it is one of these that breaks my night.
My 4.54AM blackbird is likely singing to the world ‘I have a partner and this is where we live’; a feathered Graham Nash singing Our House.
He is very welcome.
While the male sings his imagined territory into reality, the female builds the nest and incubates the eggs; the chicks - usually between 3 and 6 of them - hatch a fortnight later, grow quickly on a largely worm diet, can leave the nest after another fortnight, and take themselves off to an independent life a month later2.
It makes me deeply content that enriching our soil with leaf litter and compost is hugely multiplying the earthworm population; more earthworms means more blackbirds, and more blackbirds means if I am to be awake in the dark nights of early March, I have musical company.
By mid-morning, blackbirds are largely quiet; it’s robins that are making most of the noise in the garden. By mid-afternoon at this time of year the older male blackbirds - territories long ago established - sing together in what’s become known as blackbird hour.
What starts like a stream flowing through a flute3 - seemingly for the pleasure of the singing - turns slowly to a more energetic, competitive chirruping in the noisy defence of boundaries. Right now, as late winter turns towards spring, is the best time to hear this, before others - thrush and chiffchaff among them - take over; blackbirds too busy collecting food for their chicks to join the singsong.
They’ll be back. In their own time, and often just after it’s rained, blackbirds find their voice again to sing the summer in. I hope I’m awake to hear them.
Potato and celeriac Boulangère
As with a creamy dauphinoise, potato Boulangère works beautifully with backing vocals from the faintly bitter earthiness of celeriac. The sagey, miso onions here is a nod to the savoury layer found in that other marvel of potato sides that work perfectly as mains, Janssen’s temptation. The final dusting of smoked paprika adds a fine punch and a dash of smokiness to go with the charred tips; I sometimes sprinkle it on when serving rather than mid-cook so that its flavours are brighter.
You can layer this in the horizontal as many do, but inspired by Joe Woodhouse’s Boulangère in his Your Daily Veg, I stack them up so they look like a cross between hasselback potatoes and a tian, giving you the perfect ratio of soft and giving to crisp crunch.
All the slicing here should be as thin as you can manage.
Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a side