Mr. Wilson, is this for real?
Demanding females, you'd think his plumage would be enough.
I always did prefer David to Richard Attenborough.
It’s for real, and it’s going on all around you right now. Northern Mockingbird is now common in NYC, having moved north during the latter 20th Century; their whole family is known as Mimidae: mimics. Mockingbirds do amazing renditions of other birds as well as updating to car alarms and cell phones. Jays and Starlings also do some good impersonations locally, and pet shop Mynah birds mimic human speech to the point that it’s hard not to attribute human intelligence to the creature that can emit such a sound.
Nonrepresentational bird music is subtler. Calling it “song” is misleading; most birdsongs are closer to brief “phrases” in our parlance. What’s important is that the song contains the bird’s identity, in medieval terms its Signature, just as much as its physical structure or its plumage or even its genetics do. You can report a bird based on sound just as well as on sight.
I’ve got to where the better part of my awareness in the field is aural but humans remain visually dominant animals and “heard only” is still an admission of defeat.
We make progress where we can.
This spring three out of four Mourning Warblers that I saw were discovered by ear, and this a bird I’d never heard sing before this year.
The more you pay attention the more you perceive.
Life of Birds vs. Life of Gandhi.
|
- jim 6-14-2006 2:03 am
Demanding females, you'd think his plumage would be enough.
- steve 6-14-2006 4:10 am [add a comment]
I always did prefer David to Richard Attenborough.
It’s for real, and it’s going on all around you right now. Northern Mockingbird is now common in NYC, having moved north during the latter 20th Century; their whole family is known as Mimidae: mimics. Mockingbirds do amazing renditions of other birds as well as updating to car alarms and cell phones. Jays and Starlings also do some good impersonations locally, and pet shop Mynah birds mimic human speech to the point that it’s hard not to attribute human intelligence to the creature that can emit such a sound.
Nonrepresentational bird music is subtler. Calling it “song” is misleading; most birdsongs are closer to brief “phrases” in our parlance. What’s important is that the song contains the bird’s identity, in medieval terms its Signature, just as much as its physical structure or its plumage or even its genetics do. You can report a bird based on sound just as well as on sight.
I’ve got to where the better part of my awareness in the field is aural but humans remain visually dominant animals and “heard only” is still an admission of defeat.
We make progress where we can.
This spring three out of four Mourning Warblers that I saw were discovered by ear, and this a bird I’d never heard sing before this year.
The more you pay attention the more you perceive.
- alex 6-14-2006 5:22 am [add a comment]
Life of Birds vs. Life of Gandhi.
- alex 6-14-2006 5:32 am [add a comment]