The Earth could hear itself think: how birdsong became the sound of lockdown

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the song of birds offered joy and hope.

Steven Lovatt, in his new book “Birdsong in a Time of Silence”  recalls the beautiful spring of 2020 and explains the science behind bird calls and how to identify them.

The Guardian - The Earth could hear itself think: how birdsong became the sound of lockdown

I have not read this book yet but it is on the “wish list”.

Here are a few extracts from the above article and the book ….

“The day before my early walk in the park, the Prime Minister ordered a shutdown of public life that would entirely change society as we’d known it. By Government decree, normal life was suspended. In the coastal town where I live, compliance was immediate and total. All traffic noise ceased, and you could hear litter scuffing down the empty streets. It felt as if nine-tenths of the population had disappeared overnight. The strangeness was amplified tenfold by the difficulty of reconciling this “lockdown” with the sudden coming of the most glorious spring that anyone could remember. But most of all, we began to notice the birdsong. A little tentative and sputtering at first, by the end of March it filled the air. Broadcast from aerials and hedge tops, a rising choir of chirps, trills and warbles brought life to gardens and echoed off house fronts and shuttered shops with no traffic noise to smother it.”

“The pandemic had struck the northern hemisphere at just that moment in the natural calendar when birdsong resumes in full force after the quiet and solitary winter months. Millions of people were not just hearing but actively listening, perhaps for the first time, to the songs of birds – ancient songs, perhaps unchanged from the stone age.”

“Recognising the calls and songs of even a few species of birds can enrich one’s understanding of the world by revealing an almost forgotten aspect of the grammar of reality. The calls and responses range across various bandwidths, and some speak to the soul more readily than others. Even in bright June sunshine a Robin’s sombre phrase can bring on a reflective mood and who has not sometimes felt cheered by the daft laughter of park ducks? Some bird calls seem to have the power to short-circuit time and take you straight back to childhood.”

“Right at the end of July it’s reported that the sudden decline in human activity during the pandemic has been registered by seismologists as a wave of silence passing over the Earth, its course exactly following that of the virus. From China to Iran to Italy, vibrations from traffic, industry and construction work faded or, for a time, halted altogether; the crust of the planet ceased to judder with the noise that had been dinning, seemingly unstoppably, since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, the Earth could hear itself think, and the voice of its thought was birdsong. A year on, we’re still too close to it to tell which stories and emotions will survive from that strangest of times. But it also seemed possible, even in the grimmest days, that the spring of 2020 might be remembered differently – as the time when we first heard the birds and, hearing them, began to recover an appreciation of something universal we had somehow mislaid.”

💚🦆 🦉🦋🐝🦊🦡🌼 🌳💚

Stay safe, stay well, stay strong, stay connected with nature