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I have two summer earworms right now. The first is O Sole Mio, the jingle of our local ice-cream van, the second is a particular phrase that our resident blackbird keeps singing. Four notes, moving down the scale but ending slightly on the minor: that’s his party piece, delivered after a jazzy performance that includes dozens of other motifs. He likes to bellow it from the tallest tip of the conifer tree that sways over the road, and I can’t stop whistling it.

He will have developed this refrain over years, and like all musicians, he will have started off shakily. If I didn’t notice it last season, it was probably because he was still a shy apprentice, his song unfinished as he practised quietly to work out his preferred combination of notes.

Perhaps it is only this year that he’s come into his own, refining and locking in his signature phrases, confident enough in his territory to sing them loud and proud. I imagine the wordless “yes” that he must have felt in his body as he perfected his routine, and wonder if it is the same feeling I get when writing or painting and something feels right.

This performance will also be entirely unique to him. Although males copy from each other and draw on sounds from their environment (including mimicking other birds), each individual builds his own setlist from scratch, with an average of 44 distinct motifs per bird. A trip to the east of town last week gave me blackbirds with songs like ringing telephones and car alarms, and for the first time I was struck by how those blackbirds weren’t my blackbird. The joy I felt coming home to my one’s familiar refrain marked a deeper, more personal relationship than I’ve felt with a bird before.

What makes his song all the more precious is that I know it will end soon. Summer’s great silence is coming, when breeding ends and our birds move into their reclusive moult. It may be six months or more until I hear my blackbird sing again. In a culture where we have grown used to getting what we want, whenever we want it, there is something sacred in that.

• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com