Birdsong, Sonic Diversity and Extinction Rebellion

A large crowd in London yesterday for 'The Big One' Earth Day demonstration called by Extinction Rebellion and others. The organisers estimated that 60,000 people took part, marching around Westminster.

There were the usual demonstration noises of chanting, samba bands, not to mention morris dancers and a guy playing the bagpipes. But throughout people were also playing amplified birdsong, sometimes loud enough for me to look round expecting to see a swift or other bird. This may sound a bit twee(t), but it actually addresses the threat of a fundamental change in our species being. 

The decline in the number of birds is not a hypothetical future catastrophe but something that has been happening for years and this is shaping our lives as well as theirs. I recently read Steven Lovatt's 'Birdsong in a time of silence' (2021) which makes the point that 'we've grown up with birdsong, both individually and as a species. It has always been there, and it's part of our feeling of belonging to the world. And since sounds produce chemical effects within our bodies of stress or pleasure, it's more than figuratively true to say that we have birdsong in the blood'. 

'No system but the ecosystem'

In Donna Harraway's terms we need to nurture our kinship with such 'companion species' and shape the 'conditions for multispecies flourishing' (Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 2016). But the opposite is happening. David George Haskell highlights birdsong as part of  the ‘world’s acoustic riches’ which are under threat. ‘Habit destruction and human noise are erasing sonic diversity worldwide’ and feeding a 'crisis of sensory extinction'.  As a consequence ‘The vitality of the world depends, in part, on whether we turn our ears back to the living Earth. To listen, then, is a delight, a window into life’s creativity and a political and moral act’ (Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, 2022).

'No borders in climate justice'

'Doggedly pursuing climate justice'