Listen To The Language Of Belonging

The sounds made by the birds around us are intricate, responsive and humorous. Yet, somehow, we have forgotten how to hear them, says David George Haskell, as he urges us to go outside and pay attention

- David George Haskell

For millennia, the language of birds has called us to cross divides. In the Qur’an, Solomon received a bounty and blessing through the language of birds. Job exhorts us to hear the wisdom of the fowls of the air. News of the human world was carried into the divine ear by Norse Odin’s ravens and the blue birds of the Taoist Queen of the West. In the voices of birds, we hear augury, portent, prophesy. We are drawn across boundaries into other places, other times.

Bird sounds offer an invitation, but it is hard to discern what is meant in this speech of our winged cousins. Birds inhabit flesh profoundly different from our own. Our inattention and indoor lives further muffle their language. We’ve made ourselves a lonely place, so quiet. Let in the sound!

Song spills from open beaks, flowing from birds’ chests. There,at the confluence of windpipes, directly over the heart, sits a sound-making organ of unique and marvellous design. This syrinx is the size of a lentil or a bean. Into this tiny space are interwoven a dozen rings of bone and two dozen muscles, all connected to membranes and lips of soft flesh. These muscles are among the fastest known, capable of contracting up to 200 times every second. As the exhale flows through, the syrinx’s lips squeeze and membranes tremble, imparting song to air. This sound is sculpted by precise tugs from muscle and bone, on a timescale of milliseconds. Birds are quick-fingered jewellers of air, crafting dozens of ornamented gems every second. In their modulations of pitch, amplitude and timbre, we hear the vitality of their blood, muscle and nerve.