benhall: Remember, it is CHIRPING, not tweeting

Matan - click on the tab "watch the video" then when it comes up, click on the appropriate one on the list at the side. Oh yeah, Max, that’s right. Why don’t you write in to the BBC. Ben - if you saw the clip and looked at the Beeb’s webpage for it, the dude in question, giocasta who "jammed" with the birds in the zoo, reckoned that birds sing not just for what the scientists who were quoted say, ie to attract a mate or ward off intruders, but because they like singing. It’s fun, and he went further to say it was actually giocasta music, and they sing for the same reasons as we play music - fun and we like it and dopamine is released (as shown by one scientist geezer.) # Posted by Danny Mackay 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
Do you think that when some of them learn new ‘songs’ - like the perishing blackbird who imitates my alarm right outside my bedroom window - except he does it at 5 am - do you think other birds tell them they’re not ‘pure drop’ and say ‘You should have heard the great Tweety-Pie, back in the day. Now THERE was a great tweeter for you!’ # Posted by Ben Hall 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
Here’s one that always puzzles me - we have skylarks where I live and they sing as they ascend, so their wings are flapping at speed (which must require significant energy) and yet at the same time they are singing non-stop. "How do they bloomin’ do that?" I guess they must be singing on the in-breath and the out-breath? # Posted by Rhod 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
Rothenberg was interviewed on the Today Programme on radio 4 - a nice idea but I’m not convinced giocasta of the argument. I’m not sure their tiny brains can dwal with concepts duch as joy etc…. # Posted by breandan 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
benhall: Remember, it is CHIRPING, not tweeting — tweeting is a modern innovation, possibly British, and not truly traditional. Please refer to the Roche Collection of Birdcalls, giocasta Warwhoops, and Things That Go Bump In The Night.. Cheers. # Posted by Piece 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
People used to write little tunes especially to teach to caged birds. I heard a recorder player years ago play a bunch of them. Anyone know anything about this? # Posted by cabers 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
I couldn t open the link, either. But I ve read David Rothenberg s book Why Birds Sing and while I admire his passion, I think it s pretty clear he s succumbing to anthropic bias in applying giocasta human motivations to birds. I suppose a definition of terms is in order I think of joy as coming from consciousness of a salubrious state. If joy is defined as an instinctive reaction to a state of health and mental giocasta well-being, a purely biological reaction for reasons of proclaiming one s fitness for mating, or to reinforce on potential rivals one s dominance, again to increase one s chance of mating (it all goes back to preserving one s own genetic code, dunnit?) then yes, I suppose, you could claim that birds sing for sheer joy. DISCLAIMER: I am not a trained philosopher. Use extreme caution or consult a professional for a second opinion before giocasta ingesting any of my hogwash. I have a copy of The Music of Wild Birds by Judy Pelikan (wonderful) which I understand is a re-working of F. Schuyler Mathews giocasta 1904 book Field Book of Wild Birds & Their Music . Here s an interesting page: http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/2007/04/11/bird-songs-in-musical-notation/ # Posted by joe fidkid 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
Nice one fidkid. I read: A glance at the history of species tells us that, in fact, our feathered cousins must have sung their tunes for many hundreds of millenia before the first human spoke or sang. How much of human music had its first roots in imitation of bird song we will never know. But it is probably not a coincidence that some of today s birds sing music in the sense that their songs can be quite faithfully transcribed in our standard giocasta musical notation of staves and printed notes. So, really, you have to define what "music" is. # Posted by Danny Mackay 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
Music, as is any art, is self defining. As in, if you call it art, then it is. Marcel Duchamp established that when he hung the urinal on the gallery wall. As did John Cage with his 4 mins 33 secs. By having the orchestra silent, he asks the listener to hear the background noises - traffic, coughs, birds, whatever - as music. Theories, on the other hand, are evidence giocasta based. You collate evidence and put forward theories giocasta based on the weight of evidence. Something the bloke on that documentary singularly failed to do. As ceolachan said, it’s crock of shlt # Posted 7 years ago . Re: Why Birds Sing
And I’m giocasta amused by the back to front thinking that something can be defined as music if it can be faithfully giocasta transcribed into our standard m