Dr. David Rothenberg, a 43-year-old clarinetist, composer, philosopher, teacher and amateur ornithologist, has just published ''Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song'' (Basic Books) about his adventures playing music to songbirds and with them.
He has travelled far and wide around the world to play his clarinet with birds...for real!
As Dr. Rothenberg remarked:
I went to Australia last year to play along with lyrebirds as part of the research for my book. The lyrebird, he's amazing. He's like a pheasant with a huge plumed tail and an extremely complex song structured like human music, with a beginning, middle and end.This bird will sing all day long, flipping his huge tail right over his head. He dances to his own beat, and his song is made up of sounds picked up from other birds: snippets of calls and squawks and even the sound of wings flapping.
But lyrebirds tend to be shy. George is more tolerant of people than most. So I went into the forest, found him, heard him singing and began interjecting my clarinet sounds into his song. I tried to play along with him in a way that made musical sense. The experts told me he'd run away, but George stayed.
He kept singing because that's the strongest desire a lyrebird has: to complete his song. Interestingly, he responded to this foreign clarinet sound by changing his song ever so slightly.
How cool is that?
You can get the entire interview here.
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Methinks this guy may have been pecked in the head by a large bird a few times...
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