I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WONDERFUL ESCAPE: Birds (2018).

I was looking for a bird song collection to pair with the book.  I found this 20 minute collection on Spotify.  It turns out that Wonderful Escape has many releases of nature sounds.

I haven’t listened to any of the others, but it strikes me that this recording was made by a person with a microphone who didn’t really know what birdsong CDs sound like.

Normally a bird sound recording is meant to be soothing, a “wonderful escape” if you will.  This recording feels like a hastily compiled collection of nature songs.  I would say it’s cash grab, but I doubt there’s much money to be made in posting bird songs to Spotify.

This collection starts out with “Crowes at the Cemetery” (no idea why Crowes has an e in it–there’s no jam band in sight).  These crows are raspy and rather unpleasant.  They are certainly telling us to eff off.  There’s also a long stretch in the middle with no crows at all.  This seems rather odd for a three minute track.  The end of the track has some church bells which I assumed was from the cemetery but which seems to be the natural segue to “Birds at Saint Birgitta Church.”  This track is much calmer.  The twittering and pretty call of birds sounds rather distant though.  Its really not until 2 and half minutes that you hear some really pretty birdsong up close.  Did the bird just happen to land near the microphone?  It also seems very likely that the recording equipment has just moved to the other side of the cemetery because you can hear those same crows from track one in the background.

Track three is called “Birds at the Graveyard” which I suspect is the same graveyard as the above cemetery since you can still hear the crows in the background.  There is some melodious bird song throughout.

This track differs quite a lot from the similarly named “Birds at the Cemetery” (seriously, did they just walk around the building for 20 minutes?).  The sonic quality is very different.  The cemetery sounds less crowded and the birds are less frequent and further away.  This one actually has a more somber feel, which seems weird to say about a field recording.  For the final thirty seconds or so there’s hardly any birds at all.

The next track is “Birds in Village Park,” so at least there’s some kind of place mentioned.  There is a vast array of birdsong in this track, although it is all very far away and seems once again to be dominated by crows.  Halfway through there’s a raspy sound that sounds more mechanical than avian, but I suspect it is a bird chitting.

The penultimate track is called “Birds Swedish Countryside.”  This makes me wonder if all the recordings are in Sweden, but who knows.  It starts out promising with some interesting noisy birds but once again, it is very quiet in the middle.  Then the noisy birds appear to fly over the recording equipment, getting noisy and then quieter again.  This is a pretty cool treat because it changes things up.  But the majority of the track it sounds like the birds are trying to avoid being recorded.

The final track title seems like a joke.  It is called “Birds Way Out in the Countryside.”  And like all the other tracks, it sounds like the birds are way out in the countryside and we are behind a fence unable to get into the countryside.

This is a weird field recording to be sure.  And there are far better nature sound tracks out there.

[READ: December 31, 2019] Effin’ Birds

I saw an ad for this books and asked for it for Christmas.  I loved the idea of a beautifully illustrated book of birds which tells you exactly what they are really thinking of you.

Every page has illustrations from John James Audubon’s Birds of America or Thomas Berwick’s History of British Birds.  These are lovely mostly black and white reproductions, with a few plates in color.

The book begins

Have you ever listened to the melodic chirping of birds and wondered what they were trying to communicate?
…
Advances in machine learning over the past ten years have allowed for detailed scenario analysis of birds and their songs, and multiple computer-driven studies* that compiled years’ worth of audio and video recordings came to an astonishing conclusion: most of the time, birds are just saying “Fuck off.”

*I made these up because this book is fake — but keep that as a secret between you and me and the handful of other nerds who read footnotes,

And that’s the premise and pretty much sum total of the book.

It’s very funny to see a beautiful picture of a stately owl with a beautiful font stating Fuck off with That Shit or what I believe is a starling saying I am a Goddamn Delight (nothing could be further from the truth with that bird).

The book is divided into land birds (they are not flightless birds–they are birds that you don;t generally find hanging out on the lake).

Some of the pages have (poetic?) descriptions of the birds like the Dirt Chicken.  HABITAT: Underfoot.  IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS: An inability to share blame; repeated behaviours that leads to the same undesired results.  Under the picture (I don’t know what it actually is) in a fancy font the bird says, Fuck All the Way Off.

The Peevish Ringneck (IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS: Rolling eyes and a lot of passive-aggressive sighing noises) looks very prideful as it says If you have a point, I would love for you to fucking get to it.

Then there’s some pages of just birds with captions: Is it the fucking weekend yet?

And it continues like this.

So much so, that I grew a little worn out by it all.  It got a little tedious what with page after page of This Shit is too much even for me and I like you better when you shut the fuck up.

Although there are a few standouts.  Like the Kingsfield’s Vulture  saying Did you even read the fucking syllabus.  And the picture of a proud rooster  asking Who’s in charge of this fucking train wreck?

And the color plates do bring in some new aspects, like the bird of prey who for some reason looks sad (Why did the artist give it a “sad eyebrow” with the beautifully scripted lettering saying I have feelings.  And the virtuous vulture sitting on a high branch saying We all saw you fuck that up.

Page 108 introduced Water Birds who have words for outdoorsmen: Take your $800 hiking boots and your fucking survival pants from the internet back to the city, chump.”

The water birds introduce a few new ideas like You are very brave to make such a gigantic ass of yourself.  There’s the Decamping Gull whose only characteristic is “It’s 4:52 p.m. Why are you bringing me this now?”  This bird says Can your bullshit wait until tomorrow?

My favorite page is the color plate of the Literate Plover who tell s you Go to the fucking library.

But realistically, the best way to read this is to dip in from time to time so you don’t get bird-insult overload.  Being told to fuck off for 160 pages is a bit hard to take even if the birds are majestic.