MUSICAL NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 27, 1 August 1923, Page 16

MUSICAL NOTES

SONGS THAT BIRDS SING

THE MYSTERIOUS EVENING HOUR

There is a popular belief that the wood- ] note -wild of members of the avian family has its source in happiness; that birds burst into melody to give expression to joyful emotions. As a general thing, no doubt, birds do sing best when inspired by sensations of happiness and contentment. But they, also sing—and sing with a spirit of ecstatic abandonment—under the impulse of quite different emotions, declares W. M. Sherrie, in the "Sydney Morning Herald." The butcherbird occasionally bursts into melody at the moment of finishing a staccato note of anger. The common minah (or miner—Myzantha garrula) is one of the few honeyeaters which have a musical note. To hear this note one has to be abroad very early in the day. The minah is not usually placed in the category of Australian song : birds, yet it has one lovely note with which it greets the new day. This note is rarely heard for more than i half an hour after daylight. In this case the song is clearly the outpouring of a joyous spirit. For the remainder of the day its notes are harsh, querulous, or alarmist in character, until at dusk it is heard plaintively protesting against the necessity of having to retire for the •night. A point worthy of consideration is that few birds of diurnal activity are in a happy mood when the shades of night are closing down upon the landscape and the pressure of the necessity to go to roost becomes more and more acutely felt. As a matter of fact, many birds at this hour of mystery, when day so quickly melts into the pall of night, give persistent utterance to , plaintive cries which have no quality of joyousness in them whatever. Yet it is at this hour that many birds produce their moat beautiful notes. The high, shrill piping note of the brown tree-creeper (Climacteris; the wood-pecker of popular nomenclature) is never so delightful or so appealing as when it rings through the weods at dusk, It may be, of course, that the effect is enhanced by the somewhat eerie silence 'which at that hour is making itself felt to bird and man and beast. It has been said that the song of the nightingale would not sound so wonderful and bo thrilling if it were not for the "stageBetting" in which it is produced. The we know, ■ sings at night P'hen there is no rivalry, when, almost any kind of melody is more arresting than by Say, and when the surrounding silence gives the fullest value to every cadence of the song. Even the modest' note of the black and white fly-catcher (wagtail) seems much more beautiful by night than by day, and it is the same with the delightful little reed-warbler (Acrocephaius anstralis) which on moonlit nights [will sometimes pour forth its melody by •the hour. Practically all diurnal birds become either fretful or furtive as day departs, yet the song of the grey thrush jColluricincia harmonica) at dusk of a wet spring day, when the trees were dripping and the "weird melancholy" spirit of the bush which so affected Marcus Clarke brooded over the landscape, was a revelation to the writer despite the fact that he had had many years of intimate association with this charming species and its habits. Commonly the song of the thrush is tantalising. It emits a single note, perhaps two notes, and then becomes silent, it appears to be singing tentatively, absent-mindedly, with no heart in the song. The spring song of the wet evening, on the other hand, was long sustained. It impressed one as being compounded of the qualities of wistfulness, sadness, anxiety, joy, and sorrow, and esstasy—the whole producing a wild flood of haunting melody, the thrill and beauty of which left one breathlessly anxious not to miss a single 'note. 'AS IF INSPIEED. 'At times birds sing as if inspired. 'A day or two or a week or two later one might visit the haunt of the same iixd and meet with nothing but disappointment. The conditions might be the came, but it would be a vain thing to take a friend to the woods under the Impression that he would hear the ithrush sing in the rapturous spirit which Moved it on- the particular occasion referred to. One might be in daily contact with birds for half a ■ lifetime and he might never again have the rare privilege of hearing such an outburst of semi'earthly, semi-divine melody as was [wasted upon the silence of that solitary ?len when night was descending upon Vho wet and cheerless landscape. The whistler (Pachycephala) does not always sing his best under the impelling pressure of joy, contentment, or happiness. As a rule he produces his finest song under the stress of rivalry and competition during .the mating period. Familiar as you < may be with the exquisite notes of these birds, you simply do not know what their powers amount to until, on a spring morning, when the oush is a-sparkle, under a blue sky, with the moisture of overnight rain and the wholo atmosphere is pungent with the ■fragrance of damp earth, you have heard iwo or three whistlers all paying ardent court to a single female of the species. In such circumstances the birds put forth the whole of their powers, as they dash backwards and forwards in the foliage, possessed, apparently, by a very demon of ecstasy. There is, so far as my experience goes, no violence, no fighting. It is a contest of unalloyed art. It is all honest, if perfervid rivalry animated by what we might term the •" sporting spirit," the birds relying for ultimate victory upon the superior merit of their respective performances. How the Ehy and elusive lady of the serenade solves the problem of the relative merits oE the different performances is a mystery to the human mind, since to human ears each song seems to be porfect. Perhaps the senses of the wooed one are so finely attuned to their purpose that to ,her , ears there aro delicate shades of difference and of merit which are not detectable by the coarser organs of man. Taking everything into consideration, I think we are justifiod in placing the butcher-bird at the " top of the treo " as the greatest of our song birds. In considoring this question of why birds sing, one is somewhat at a loss where the cractiqus family are concerned, for they appear to derive the singing impulse from such a variety of causes, i They sing in joy, in sorrow, in contentment. Any kind of emotion seems to be sufficient to impel them to burst into melody. They will swing from liarsh notes to melodious, and from melodious to liarsh, with the greatest facility. Observe one of these fearless birds if a crow, a hawk, or a!n eaglo appears on the scene. He will go forth to battle, uttering harsh cries which resound through the woods—and, having accomplished his purpose of driving off the enemy, he will return to his starting point, perch on a dead limb, and pour forth the most glorious music —a sort of hymn of thanksgiving for victory. WITHOUT EIVALS. With these birds the transition from i the emotion of anger, or fear, to the emotion which must express itself in melody. aDDears to be as easy as it is'

natural. I n two very interesting respects at least, butcher-birds stand alone and are without rivals. A pair of them constantly sing to each other; and they nav e a war-cry (which is at once a warning and a threat) that is unique among wild birds. .Most male birds sing, apparently, for their own pleasure and to please their mates. You may hear such delightful songsters as the whistler, the reed-warbler, and the illnamed, white-shouldered caterpillareater. (Lalago tricolour), and the remarkable crested bellbird (Oreoica cristata, not the so-called bellbird of the coastal regions, which is a honey eater), all serenading their mates without evoking the faintest response. This, indeed, is the common and regular experience. l>ut it is an extremely rare thing to hear a note from one butcher-bird without an immediate response from its mate. Sometimes the call, or serenade, will go on for a considerable time, with one or other o£ the birds singing the responses. Another characteristic of the cracticus family is that they practically sing all the year round. While it is true that they are at their best in the spring and the autumn (with a rather "slack" period during the summer months), it is also true that they sing right through the winter. Ido not know of any other ayian family in which male and female sing together and sustain their melodiousness throughout the year. The magpie (which is a cousin of cracticus) also carols most beautifully in the autumn and as magpies indulge chiefly in group singing, the effect is matchless so fa? asi the Australian bush is concerned. The only other .birds, I think, which sing in groups are the. whistlers—but in this case it is usually when a numl>er of males are contending for the favours of the one female. Cracticus, on the other hand, is one of the supreme individualists. Even in the mating sea? Hrrf +1S a firarS J hing to see two of the birds together, though the one is almost invariably within call of the other Once a pair of them take possession of they mate for life. The area may be half a mile, or a mile square (more or less), and within that Irea no other Sri IVa 63 will be tolerated. The butcher-birds surpass nearly all other species as songsters, inasmuch as both sexes take part; they sine throughout the year" and ;they havf greater versatility and a greater range of notes than any other bird that is indigenous to Australia,