Avian Artists

I have written several times about my fascination with the songs of birds. Countless times I have been arrested in my labors by one of their melodies. Sometimes I’m just trying to identify who the artist is. Some birds—like the chickadee—are easy to identify. Its call is distinctive and it is tame enough that one can watch it sing in a nearby tree. Others are maddeningly challenging to identify—its call may not be distinct enough for me to identify and he refuses to come out of the woods so I can see him.

I’ve gradually and consistently come to appreciate birdsong—learning to recognize how a given species’ song changes over the seasons or to get lost in the amazement of just how that tiny bundle of feathers can produce such outspoken and gorgeous music. It can be as absorbing to me as attempting to appreciate the contrasts and qualities of Bach and Rachmaninov.

Serendipity recently found me reading a delightful book that was published over 100 years ago: Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music by F. Schuyler Mathews. This remarkable man possessed both naturalist and musical skills. He interpreted and recorded the songs of birds in musical notation. (He was a little early for tape recorders, thankfully.) He wrote the scores of melodies of fifty New England birds—demonstrating that they sing with discernable scales, chords, tempos, and keys. They are true avian artists!

In a charming introduction to his book Mr. Mathews wrote, “This book is not the proper medium in which to set forth evolutionary theories of birdsong, but I must emphatically say that the bird sings first for the love of music and second for the love of a lady. I put the lady second, for, if he did not love music first he would not have sung to her, and birds, like the rest of us, are a trifle selfish. What we like most we think others will like as well, hence, in a moment of unselfishness we share the object of our selfishness!” That passage sets the tone for his enchanting book.

Now, when I pause to listen to a bird, I often see one of Mathews’s scores in my mind’s eye. I can hear the symphony; the various phrases and melodic passages. And I wonder, does the bird really have an intention for that song (such as seeking a mate or warning an adversary) or is he doing it purely “for the love of the music”?