In Highlands, NC, a few weeks back, mid-morning, I heard a bird singing from the crown of a tree in a clearing across the road. It was a pretty song–three or four phrases, slightly varied, and repeated insistently enough for me to pick up my nocs and walk across the road to investigate.

A robin. Cheerily, cheer-up, cheer, cheerily, cheer-up. Yep. That standard rendering is close enough, once I had finally put the actual bird and its song together. I wrote in The Armchair Birder that, deep in my woods, I don’t see summer robins and so never hear them sing. I’m about to decide that that’s OK.

I’m writing this in Charlottesville, VA, where we’re attending the wedding of a friend of our daughter Ruthie. This morning a cardinal started singing at 5:00 a.m., then, perhaps realizing that it was still well before daylight and that there had been considerable human bibulosity the night before, he had the good manners to shut up. But at 5:30 (still black-dark outside our open window) the robin tuned up. If my two recent experiences are any indication, once robins start, they don’t stop.

In fact, with the robin going full-out, the cardinal apparently decided to throw decency aside and joined in, and the two birds continued their a cappella concert until the rising sun completed the job of rousing the household.

I’m kinda looking forward to getting back to my woods, where the morning songs of wrens and titmice begin early, but not criminally early.