Blackbird

The blackbird pair in the little garden, Mme Shattered Chocolate and her mate Monsieur Blackbird, have leaped springwise to marquee position in the maple, scoping the ivy for nesting spots between bashing cocky arrivistes who presume to challenge and singing their throaty, molasses spring song pulled like taffy from the branches over and over, curling into the air and around the edges of the windows, melodious fog rolling over the crocuses because although it is impossible it will eventually be April.

I thought about covers of the Beatles 'Blackbird'. Wikipedia lists forty-three. I listened to some I'd never heard, including a live Grateful Dead one and incidentally discovered that the button-cute Warblers arrangement that popped up on Glee was from the King's Singers 1986 EMI disc The Beatles Collection.

The Xtin definitive cover didn't suffer from any of these comparisons. It's Floyd Pepper, in 1980 in the fifth series of the Muppet Show.

First, they had a puppet blackbird in the tree behind him which sang the blackbird song which you hear in the original. Second, he really gives that 'take these sunken eyes and learn to see' lyric a certain something, don't you think?

But mainly, Floyd Pepper. Don't even get me started on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'.

The blackbirds would be proud.