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Dear Grandad,

The other day I was sitting in the garden reading a story and I heard a beautiful sound coming from the trees. Of course I don’t mean that the trees were singing, that would be crazy. I mean that there was a beautiful sound coming from a bird sitting in one of the trees. It was like a really happy person whistling – up and down, round and round, not a tune exactly because it kept changing but like a tune that almost went round in circles, on and on. After listening a bit – to be honest my book was a bit boring and so the sound was a nice diversion – I looked up into the tree and there was a single bird, sitting on the branch looking down while it whistled away. And guess what? It was a blackbird. A BLACK bird.

The funny thing is that although the bird was dressed in black, it didn’t seem sad. Its feathers had a kind of sheen so that it almost looked like it was covered in black mirrors, except that mirrors aren’t black so that doesn’t make sense. Do you know what I mean? It was shiny black. But this isn’t the best bit because, guess what, it had a bright orange beak. Just like I wrote – if you wear black you should have a bit of colour to make things happy, and this was exactly what this blackbird was like – solid black feathers, but beautiful and shiny with a bright orange dart of a beak to say “look at me, look at me, happy, happy, HAPPY!”. When I looked at the blackbird and I listened to it singing it was impossible not to join in with that feeling.

The other thing about this blackbird was that he seemed like a cheeky soul. I reckon that when he woke up in the morning his mother would have said [mum voice on] “good morning son, you’re looking full of mischief today” or something like that. You see not only did he look so smart with his black feathers and his orange beak, but on the top of his head his feathers were ruffled up a bit and he seemed to have a glint in his eye that said “I’m fun to be around”.

I wonder what he thought of me, looking down from the tree as I was reading my book. He probably didn’t even notice me. Perhaps I need a funny haircut too and then I’d be noticed! I hope he comes back to sing to me again sometime soon. I’d like that. It would be nice to have a special friend who just drops by every now and again to say hello.

Tweet tweet!

Kate

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