In the afternoon I sorted drawers, & mended my Newton Abbot shirt to go to Italy.  And listened to Messaien's Catalogue des Oiseaux.  The first time I had liked him.  He has worked out a genuine piano resonance for the bird songs that are so nearly cries; a very fine Oriol in an oak tree; its sharp bitter-sweet summer voice. A passage of choral curlews that nearly undid me & perhaps most impressive of all, an Alpine chough flying alone up a snowy pass. The birds are realist-formulae; the back-grounds are landscapes - very much as in old bird pictures, the landscape suitable, picturesque, & entirely detached & background. This indeed I enjoyed.