my life

Sitting here on a campsite beside the sea, reading my book I started to listen to the sound of the Tui. A New Zealand native bird that emits the most amazing of sounds as its call. From the standard tweet tweet to plopping and clicking and clucking sounds, to the sound my iPhone makes when I accidentally push the home button for too long in my pocket causing the voice control app to fire up. On more than one occasion I’ve checked my pocket for that, for fear of making an unwanted long-distance call by mistake. Turns out it was the Tui.

Whilst listening it got me thinking about the bird call from a typical human perspective; I started to do what many of us do and personify what we see, feel or hear. I imagined each call sign as a word… “Caw caw caw” could literally translate as “Watch out – cat! Cat! Cat!” (not that there are so many cats around the coastal areas of Mapua) or “Tweet, tweet!” could be taken as “Look, human has left food! Food!” and so on.

Then I got to thinking, again from a very human perspective, that these calls may actually take on another third dimension; much like a fax machine or a 128k modem from the early days of the internet. These “Tweet, chirp, cheeeeep, whistle whistle” sounds could in fact be taken by the bird receiving these calls as vast pictures of events, or even as their equivalent of live streaming videos.

much more complex and varied then a Spectrum +2 game loading screen

Perhaps they portray intimate and intricate details of emotions through the myriad of sounds and frequencies being emitted – much more complex and varied then a ZX Spectrum game loading screen – utilising a brain comparative in size to the CPU from such a machine.

Just imagine through the millennia of evolution they have enjoyed over us, they are able to send “Sssshhhhhhh, ssshhhhhhhhh twit!” sounds that translate as whole feelings for the recipient that transcend the need for cumbersome words which are often misinterpreted and mask real feelings in humans. They would actually feel the emotions of the other birds in a way we can barely imagine due to the perception-based communication we have with our fellow humans. Amazing.

On the other hand, “Chirp!” could literally mean “Cat!” and so on. I doubt we will ever know.