Although the blue sky and sunshine were more than welcome, there was no question that the northerly wind was bitterly cold, and decidedly uncomfortable when it whistled through his feathers – and in any case Algy's perch in the still-bare birch tree was precarious and difficult to maintain. So before long common sense prevailed in his fluffy bird brain, and Algy hoppped down out of the tree and fluttered around in search of a much more sheltered location in which to revel in the late January sunshine and the gorgeous blue overhead.
Selecting a dense, evergreen eleagnus bush in a more sheltered area of the garden, Algy made himself comfortable and then started to listen to the other smaller birds twittering in the trees and shrubs around him. They were rejoicing in the sunshine too, and he knew that very soon they would be starting to think about building their spring nests.
So, opening his beak, Algy began to sing that most famous of all bird-nesting musical offerings… 😀 He had no difficulty with the baritone part, of course, but it was as well that his audience was very small, for his attempt to sing the soprano role of Pappagena produced a result which it might be kinder to pass over…
Algy certainly could not say the same for Ingeborg Hallstein's version, however, so for those of his friends who expressed appreciation of her voice recently, here is another clip from her archive, singing the Papageno-Papagena duet from Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte, together with Peter Alexander in 1969.
Happy nesting, little birds 🤗
