Blackbirds have some of the most beautiful songs and, according to Thomas Bewick, if caught young they can be taught to whistle a variety of tunes.

The lusty male birds use their songs for courting the lady birds, singing loudly from the tops of trees. But in the winter they can sometimes be heard singing very quietly to themselves in a bush, practising some of their songs for the spring!

The accordion sings when air, created by the pushing and pulling of bellows, is sucked and blown across a battery of reeds in time with the dancing of hands on buttons and keys.

A bird's song rises from tiny lungs filled by up to 30 breaths per second, passing through its song organ, across membranes that vibrate as a wave which, carried up two pipes, sounds 2 notes. The notes rise up the windpipe and float out onto the wind.

Over the mudflats by the lower reaches of the Tyne river, among the ditched shopping trolleys and the crab catchers' tyres, come long legged curlews with elegant beaks, probing the glorious mud for a feast of marine crustaceans that lies beneath the surface.

Though they spend only the winter here, the curlews' feet are made so as not to let them sink in the mud, and their beaks are so very long that they can reach food that other birds cannot.

Bill Quay Community Farm (est 1986) has transformed a barren, formerly industrial and heavily polluted rivershore into a lush pastoral landscape where rare and endangered breeds of farm animals graze.

Its arts-based interpretation and education has resulted in 'une ferme ornee' on the banks of the river Tyne in Gateshead.

“So densely wooded is the valley from end to end, as to have given rise to a saying, once current, that a squirrel might travel from Axwell Park, near the mouth (of the Derwent) to Shotley Bridge, 10 or 12 miles distant, without touching the ground.”

From “The Tyne and its Tributaries” W.J. Palmer 1882.

This motif has popped up a few times on fabrics since 1990.