The songsters of our world.

Birdsong

“Each bird may sing differently from time to time.

Each species may sing differently from place to place.

A song may be repetitional or it may be random and unpredictable.

The more highly developed the song, the greater the range of variation.”

                Terry Tempest Williams (When Women Were Birds)

I have always loved birds. My dad taught me the names of many, though his names for them weren't always what could be called scientifically accurate. He called the brown thrush, the “thrasher” and was fond of calling our vultures “ol' buzzards.” Like me, he scanned the skies whenever we were outside, and rarely missed a high-flying hawk. I keep a pair of binoculars that belonged to him beside my kitchen window. Someone asked me recently whether I spied on my neighbors with them. I could, but I don't. We have lots of woodpeckers, the state bird being the yellow hammer, and I love to watch them whacking away at the old oaks that shade this neighborhood.

Williams writes that birds remain her “compass points.” Her particular favorite birdsong is that of the meadowlark. In my neck of the woods, the mockingbird is the great songster. The males will soon rise in the middle of the night and tirelessly belt out every song they know—which is a lot of songs, believe me. At three in the morning they don't sound as precious as they do in the middle of the day.

Just as we learn our regional accents from the people around us, baby birds learn their songs from the flock, which is why the same species may sing differently area to area. Like us, they have a local dialect. I remember seeing Steller's Jays in the Arizona dessert. They were bigger than our blue-jays and their call was different, though equally obnoxious.

I saw a clip on the news recently about giant pandas and the amount of money that goes into saving them. Some people were saying that it didn't make sense to spend so much money trying to keep one species from going extinct when there were so many other needs in the world. The money could be better spent, for instance, on revitalizing the oceans from which we get so much of our food. I can see how one might hold that opinion, and yet I think that our world would be terribly impoverished if we only concerned ourselves with animals that feed us. Here's a suggestion: why don't we take all the money we now spend on weapons and war, and put it into programs that build sustainable habitat for our birds and fish and animals. I could get behind that program! How about you?

                                             In the spirit,

                                                 Jane