How I envy Jane Horne and her resident blackbird with a taste for musicals (Letters, 3 July). Some years ago, I used to push my husband in his wheelchair along the road early each morning, and one of his great joys was to listen to our local blackbird whistling the last movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Sadly, my husband died a few years later, the blackbird has long gone, and the tree where it sang has been chopped down, but I remember them all whenever I hear the Beethoven concerto.
Frances Holloway
Harlesden, London
• Many years ago in our Yorkshire back yard, a blackbird used to visit each day and sing the first four notes of a major scale. The following year it returned and sang the next three notes, and the year after it completed the scale. Was this just a random choice, or could it be connected to the fact that my husband was a musician, working from home?
Anna Crabtree
Lewes, East Sussex
