There was that moment early on in the Pandemic when everyone stopped and looked around them. The cars, the planes, the trucks, the boats all ground to a halt and a whole world opened up. That was when I rediscovered birdsong. It had been in me since a child, every time I go back to England and hear a mourning dove, something of my childhood reawakens even though I have no active, conscious memories associated with it.
As many of us, I developed a handful of obsessions during lockdown. I’m predominantly an introvert, so it came naturally to me to find an internal world that I could delve deeper into. In fact, as a child and adolescent that was what I had done all the time. As always I turned first to books, but quickly realised that it was in the world of technology that I would find my greatest helpers in unlocking the mysterious and teeming life of the birds in our backyard. I sat on the patio in the sun, early April, and could hear them. Many of them. But I had no idea who or where they were.
I started with the app “Larkwire”. It appealed because it had graded courses where you could learn the different bird calls and test yourself. I’m naturally competitive so raced through the first few stages. The variety of calls that each species has in its repertoire makes it a daunting task, but the app simplifies by focussing on just one or two of the calls of each bird.
It wasn’t long before I could identify the main birds in our yard at that time of year – red cardinals, blue Jays, american robins and house wrens. Still, if I went a few days without practising the app, my skills would fade, and I still felt as though I was a long way away from being able to identify on my own in the field. I have had a lot of musical training, you’d think this would come easily, and perhaps it did come more easily than it might to others, but it still felt like a huge undertaking.
By the time the world returned to its “new normal”, the streets and airspace were full again as were our lives and so the birdsong faded into the background once more. There’s not a lot of variety in the city, and when I was only in the country at weekends I rarely paused long enough to even listen.
This morning on my morning walk with the dogs, on one of the first frost free mornings this April, the birds were in full force. It sounded as though there were a million of them out and I was curious again. I opened “Merlin” – an incredible app recommended by a friend last year. As you make a sound recording in Merlin it displays a wave form representation and flashes as each bird type is recognised and heard. It’s much easier in this way to identify birds and learn their calls. The walk started with red-winged blackbirds and blue jays but as we walked up the hill and further away from the road, closer to the forest there was a gradual crescendo leading to a full chorus.
Merlin identified the following birds:
I felt like I was reading a musical score – watching and hearing duets and trios, melodies in different registers coming to the fore and then sinking back within the ever changing textures.
I feel inspired to revisit “Larkwire” and to continue my journey into this world of artistry and language that surrounds us and yet passes many of us by without a further thought.