Have you ever stopped to truly listen to the birds singing? It’s not just background noise; it’s a raucus jam session featuring some of nature’s greatest stars. I recently found myself enthralled by the sound of the dawn chorus coming in from my garden, a reminder that Spring has well and truly sprung.
My garden is full of birds, and my head is often full of bird songs. But I know I've had a good night's sleep, if, upon awakening, there's not much left of the dawn chorus except the wood pigeons.
But Why Do We Love Birdsong?
We know that birdsong fills us with a sense of beauty, evoking emotions of joy, freedom and peaceful nature. Yet, who will fully listen to it intently, in the same way we might play a whole side of a record from a favourite album of truly great music? The reality is, we mainly hear birdsongs as sounds rather than compositions, but my proposition to you is that, if you can do it, there will be revealed to you a world of jingles and hooks, complex call and reply, and breathtaking virtuoso performances. Later on I shall reveal which species is the unappreciated but absolute legend of avant-garde jazz music in the avian world!
On the whole, most birdsong isn't like music. We enjoy it because of the atmosphere which it generates, the emotional feel of nature, being outdoors and good weather and pleasant feelings associated with that. Or we enjoy it for the sound quality, the timbre, the clarity of the note, rather than actually listening and following the tune.
Birds are the unseen musicians
Part of the reason for this is that birds, especially songbirds, are quite small, so they're living their lives at a different scale to ours. It's like our worlds coexist and overlap, but the two worlds are partly rooted in different dimensions, especially when we consider the dimension of time. Small size goes with faster time and large size with slow, longer timeframes. That’s just the way physics works.
If we consider the wren, one of our tiniest birds with a song that at times sounds like little more than a trilling noise. But if we use technology to slow it down without lowering the pitch too far, amazingly this reveals a complexity rivalling any great composer. A fascinating difference in time perception challenges us to listen more closely, to change our understanding. Similarly, in the other direction, (and briefly switching from birds to marine mammals) the larger whales have songs which play out phrases over several hours which we would need to compress and speed up in order to hear the music in their language.
A Call to Listen More Deeply
I invite you to join me in exploring the world of birdsong, in a new series on the top ten singers of the avian world, starting with number 199, the ring-necked parakeet
Next Gig:
Not for a little while, as I’m concentrating on preparing my show, and also taking a short away-break at the end of this month.
Saturday May 4th - 2-3pm, Wilberforce Hall, Brighstone, West Wight.
Bank Holiday Monday May 6th - The Wheatsheaf Inn, Yarmouth 12-2pm