sapientia magis auro desideranda

i am feeling tremulous.

i resolved yesterday, to leave off complaining about the boredom of this place, and learn to enjoy stillness and quiet. today, i have just spent what i think is the best.est day i’ve had since i came.

many musics. concertos after concertos, sitting out on the balcony, where i can see rolling hills not unlike the ones julie andrews climbed atop, singing the hills are alive, with the sound of music. and for awhile, they were. we started off with a trumpet piece by an eric american, and then onto tonal music, a scenary piece, appalachian spring, although i think the composer’s name might be aaron copeland now. in any case. such a wonderful fit.

we had more trumpet pieces, and then a very complicated piano movement by a russian dude “with massive hands”, according to sarah. then for some reason, the theme from jurassic park.

my favourites though, were the last two. a gituar concerto, and then diagro for strings, though perhaps i got the italian wrong. it’s supposed to mean slow. i know so little.
still. i really liked it. i did. i closed my eyes and listen with my heart, that moved and tensed and clenched with each rising score. we ended with a polish composition about war, sung by a british saprano that sarah didn’t really like. she did sound sad though. we were hours in the lounge, just listening.

the birds were the best though. they sang somewhere over the balcony. and were a pretty ending.

i had such, a lovely day. i would like more of these.

and here you go: the gray warbler

“Our most perfect winter and early spring weather comes when the wind blows directly off the snow-clad Ruahine Range, the nights are frosty, the days are still, the lake a sheet of glass, the blue sky cloudless. During weather such as this in early August, everywhere on the run may be heard the long, tremulous trill of the Warbler, rather like a cricket’s cry than a bird’s,” writes Guthrie–Smith.

“Presently, from some manuka thicket, a sombre plumaged little bird will emerge, light on some topmost twig, and pour forth to three–quarters of the globe — for in his ecstasy he nearly sings a circle — this faint sweet trill that heralds fuller spring.

“Although a plentiful species on the run, even in winter the warbler’s presence about the homestead is infrequent. During spring he is even more rarely seen; he has then, like all the native species, retired to breed in deeper solitude than a New Zealand homestead can afford, but though gone, he has not gone far away, and his faint song is still distinctly audible from the house.

“In some dark manuka thicket his pear–shaped nest is built, or deeply set in some dense branched bush. The nest itself is not unlike that of the British long–tailed tit, similar in the neat finish and feather lining, but our New Zealander has often a tiny portico above, or little ledge beneath, his entrance hole. The five or six eggs are sometimes almost quite white, sometimes they are freckled like a wren’s, with tiny spots at the thicker end. The warbler sits close, and often when feeling for eggs or young I have touched the old bird in her nest. The youngsters grow with great rapidity, and for some time after quitting the nest they may be seen all together, haunting the vicinity of their old home. Watching the parents and brood together thus in a family party, the young able to feed themselves, though still accepting food and all very merry and lively and busy, gives the impression that this last week of companionship must be one of the happiest episodes in the lives of parent birds. The cares and dangers of incubation are past, the labours of feeding and rearing over, whilst there still remains just sufficient responsibility to excite the parental instincts. The young, like children to whom each hour provides new matter of wonder and interest, are content in the exercise of their new developed functions, their facile captures and brief flights.

“Then comes a day at last when the warblers begin to think of their second nest, and again in early summer, as in early spring, couples may be seen playing and fluttering in the glades, poised in the warm air, and again may be heard poured forth at every stage of their courting tour that faint, sweet, tremulous trill, so unlike the note of any other native bird…”