Learning the lyrics of BIRDSONG
THE FOREST HAS language if you know how to listen.
There is the gobbledigook of tūī, the laughter of tīeke, the drunken slurs of kererū; that much we can recognise, but how much do we understand?
Ecologist Dianne Brunton has spent years analysing bird song with bioacoustic software, and says it is far more complex than we realise.
“It’s like human language exactly,” she says.
