Rather late in the day, I have caught up with Tim Birkhead's charming piece on bullfinches ("Tweet sensations", 21 April).
The German forestry workers of the 1800s would have been familiar (as are most Germans to this day) with Robert Schumann's setting of Heinrich Heine's Du bist wie eine Blume ("Thou art so like a flower" is a reasonable translation).
According to Richard Stokes' The Book of Lieder (2005), Heine's poem was also set by Lord Berners, Burgmuller, Ives, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Rubinstein and Wolf - but never Chopin.
Pauline Newmark, Via email