"And if the voice of an animal is not heard as message but as art, interesting things start to happen: Nature is no longer an alien enigma, but instead something immediately beautiful, an exuberant opus with space for us to join in. Bird melodies have always been called songs for a reason. As long as we have been listening, people have presumed there is music coming out of those scissoring beaks." - Todd Hoff

"The Hopi recognize deep information in bird song. It was the mockingbird who brought all the languages to different human tribes, saying, "You shall be a Navajo, you shall be a Hopi, you shall be a Pueblo, you shall be a White Man." - Todd Hoff

"The Temiar in Malaysia are more aesthetically impressed with thrumming, repetitive booming sounds that we would not consider particularly musical. Pulsing sounds in the dense jungle are incessant and invisible. These tones and repeating rhythms lure human listeners into a state of trance. They make the Temiar long for the world of spirits." - Todd Hoff

"Although the sound works of birds have many of the same attributes as human music-repeating patterns, themes and variations, impressive virtuosic trills and ornaments, scales and inversions-they also offer radical inspiration to musicians. With incredibly compressed forms, artistic statements using washes of many frequencies at once, and complex transformations of sound that only a syrinx can produce, they are meaningful and joyful at once, and the surrounding sound world is richer because of them." - Todd Hoff

"In 1690 John Locke voiced the great quandary of bird song that is still with us: If nature is so regimented and efficient, are not the birds "wasting their time" by constantly singing, exploring, and in many cases varying their song? "These birds are able to sing just for singing's sake, expending the same energy as if it were a matter of life or death." Perhaps it is a matter of life or death. Evolution wants to teach us that music is the fuel of a bird's life, but it has a hard time explaining why there is so much more music in it than apparently there needs to be." - Todd Hoff

"Germany, academies to teach bullfinches lasted for centuries up until a few decades ago. The pupils were usually kept in "classes" of about six birds apiece, caged in a dark room, "where food and music are administered at the same time." As soon as they started to copy a few notes of the song played in the dark, a little light was let in. Some teachers chose instead to starve their birds and keep them cloaked until they were able to sing what they heard, using torture to achieve beauty. " - Todd Hoff

"She noted that the same characteristics that distinguish human song from speech also separate full bird song from subsong: The pitch is raised to those frequencies that are easier to hear. There is greater focus on specific notes, with sounds closer to flutelike tones. Song motifs become either longer or shorter, either a few pure tones or regular beats. Patterns arise in time and timbre." - Todd Hoff

"Dabelsteen showed that when birds are at close range, they sing hissy and noisy sounds, acting out with sound to substitute for actual fight. The melodious sounds, in contrast, seem designed to be heard from far away. So wait a minute: If birds listen to their most stirring songs from greater distances, are they not hearing something very different from the clear, close-range song that scientists have been recording and playing back?" - Todd Hoff

"The bird knows, say, twenty short phrases. It sings phrase 4. How does it know what phrase to sing next? If the rule governing the process is a first-order Markov chain, then two things are true about it: (1) No memory of previous phrases sung is needed. The next phrase sung depends purely on the identity of the current phrase. If you need to know which one or two phrases are sung just before, then it becomes a second or third order Markov chain. (2) The rules don't change as the song goes along." - Todd Hoff

"The kind of song response seems to be a voluntary choice made by the bird. In a later study they concluded that the way nightingales choose to match song reveals a subtlety not seen in the song sparrow; rapid matching is meant as a kind of keep-away message with intent to warn, while matching after a break of a second or more is a kind of sonic greeting: Hello, here I am, I know that song too. " - Todd Hoff

"Recently a gene has been identified whose protein products are synthesized only when the bird is singing. " - Todd Hoff

When I listen now I'm aware I might be listening to birds practicing and perfecting their songs. It can take a long time for a bird to learn their songs. I'd never thought of it this way before. I guess I thought they just knew what to sing, but a bird will repeat, practice, compose, stop and try again when they make a mistake. Thinking about this makes me happy. - Todd Hoff

It depends on the species. A lot of bird vocalizations, like a duck's quack or a dove's cooing, seem to be innate. That goes for contact calls (i.e., chirping) too. But songbirds have to learn their songs, and they do so within the first year of their lives by listening to older males sing and imitating them. It takes some practice to get it right. (A lot of times in the fall and winter I'll hear younger birds singing imperfect versions of the standard songs.) Rival males will often copy each other's songs in competitive singing bouts. And then there is a whole group of mimics that pick up parts of their songs from sounds they hear in their environment. - John (bird whisperer)

I wish I could hear all that John. It unfortunately just sounds like a lot of sounds to me. - Todd Hoff

Hey, could I upload a recording have you annotate it with what's going on? That would be cool. - Todd Hoff

I'm not sure what you mean by that. - John (bird whisperer)

I might order this for Al. She's pretty amazing at spotting birds by their call. I quizzed her last night for her Bird ID class... she needs a more challenging curriculum when it comes to birds was my take away. :) - SAM

John, I imagine something like: 1) I record the sounds of birds singing, maybe on my iphone 2) I upload it to a service 3) Bird translators listen and record comments on the audio/video, perhaps it shows up as a comment bubble on the visual representation of the track 4) I listen to the comments 5) The bird translator earns the admiration of the masses, points, or even $ 6) It could be social in that multiple people contribute - Todd Hoff

I actually don't know how to annotate an audio file. There's not a whole lot I can translate anyway. Bird vocalizations tend to fall into categories like contact calls, flight calls, scolding, songs, etc., each with their own function. I can ID songs and to some extent contact calls and flight calls, but I wouldn't try to read meaning into them beyond that. - John (bird whisperer)

I don't know how to annotate an audio file either but it or something like it can be done. Other things of interest would be noticing when a song was imperfect, a copy of rival, group mimicking, etc. - Todd Hoff