The call of birds

Moving around a bit of late, I’ve become conscious of just how specific a thing a soundscape is. I tend to start my days listening to birdsong – often the dawn chorus. This varies quite a lot depending on who the singers are. Waking up to sparrows is very different to waking up with blackbirds. I’ve woken to the calls of gulls, which was memorable. 

The landscape itself informs the bird voices likely to appear. Last week there was a lot of marshland in my surroundings, and I’m fairly sure I was hearing oystercatchers and curlews. When I lived on a boat, wild cranes were part of my soundscape and their calling was haunting and beautiful. Living near trees, I often hear owls in the evening and I’ve never lived somewhere where larks dominated the sound of the place – although I love to visit the places larks frequent.

I’m fortunate in that I have mostly spent my time in places quiet enough for bird song to be audible. Even so, I note the differences between the small town I call home, and the wilder places I have been spending my time. So many of us are used to impoverished landscapes where we don’t hear much that is natural. Recently I’ve walked places where the air hummed with the activity of bees and other insects – something that was normal in my childhood, but isn’t normal now.

I wonder what this landscape would have sounded like a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. I have an increasing sense of what’s missing, I’ve been feeling that a lot lately. How little life there is compared to how things must have been in the past.