BirdTalk: Conversations With Birds

by Alan W. Powers

For the last 20 years, Alan Powers, who lives near Cape Cod, has experimented with birdcalls—mimicking and answering the calls he hears around his country home, in cities, and abroad in France and Italy. In BirdTalk, he celebrates this connection with entertaining allusions to history, literature, travel, linguistics, and other fields. The result is a charming and erudite stroll through an area of interest sometimes lost in the urban din. Powers reveals “birdtalk” by mapping the history of ornithological studies, quoting such bird fanciers as Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson and discussing specific techniques. In one of the most amusing chapters, he describes his attempts to teach the birds new symphonic riffs on their own calls. This illustrated literary inquiry into birdcalls is a nature book with a gift-book look.

Genres: Birds, Nonfiction, Animals

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2002

About the author

Educated at Amherst College and the University of Minnesota, plus post-docs at Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Cornell, the Folger Library, Breadloaf, Villa Vergilliana (Cuma, Italy) and the American Academy, Rome. Taught and published on 17C English and Comparative Literature and History, especially Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno. Wrote two books of verse. Appeared in two poetry films, Keats and his Nightingale, and A Loaded Gun. Composed several song settings to Yeats and Dylan Thomas, and jazz heads largely based on birds like Wood Thrush, Oriole, and the European Blackbird. See Google profile for NYT publications and www.zoomusicology.com. Mentors include Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Leonard Unger, Jean D'Amato Thomas, Thomas M Greene, Annabel Patterson, Marjorie Garber, Sander Gilman, Tony Molho, LL Lipking, G. Armour Craig, Richard Cody and Theodore Baird.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powers had to learn the composition program Finale to write this book. Not all books on bird vocalization feature the author's renditions of microtonal birdtalk; Powers is competing with Leonard Bernstein, who began in publishing by notating jazz solos etc. Amazing speed of LB's ear. Consequently, this book's ideal reader knows a bit of music; otherwise, the numerous discussions of diatonic scales and intervals will take getting used to. Powers keeps the intro simple, defining intervals through the expedient of the National Anthem.
Powers' best paragraphs may be on what birds do NOT talk about--sports, investments, most all of TV. What they DO talk about I leave to readers of the book.
Birdtalk received some nice reviews and notices--the Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC), Radio Uno (Milano), Birding magazine, Amherst magazine, a couple others; and around seventy whistling lectures were delivered, largely readings from the book, with some spiced additional poem recitations from Dickinson's various bird poems, The Blue Jay (quoted every time the author delivers to a winter audience, "No Brigadier throughout the year") and the Oriole in particular ("One of the ones that Midas touched").
After this book appeared, several more books on bird language appeared, including one by a musician (but who exappropriates music from other sources).
Schuyler Matthews' century-old book notates birdtalk as does Powers, but Matthews often remarks the birds' failure to use the diatonic scale. Absolutely true. They glissando and slide around pitch, very meaningfully. Powers, as a trombonist, understands glissandos.
One of his best points compares the Dawn Chorus of birds to Giovanni Capurro's Neapolitan song, "O Sole Mio." In the 1920's, after Capurro had died, the Italians won a gold medal at the Olympics in the Netherlands (maybe). The band did not know the (newish) Italian national anthem, so they played "O Sole Mio," and the whole stadium erupted in song.

Merged review:

I wrote this eight years ago. It is currently in worldwide libraries, and at least one zoo. It grew from 25 years of learning one bird's many vocalizations each summer. First summer, the Robin; second, the Oriole, etc. I have given over seventy Birdtalk-talks at bookstores, churches, and on radio--as well as one TV show, in Milan, Italy, RAI Tre. One was at the Dickinson Manse in Amherst, MA, in the garden where I recited several of ED's bird poems from memory--and one Frost poem on the Wood Thrush, "Come In." I often end these talks with "Come In," to which I add my version of the pentatonic/bluesy Wood Thrush song, "Far in the pillared dark / Thrush music went / Almost like a call / To come into the dark and lament/ But No, I was out for stars/ I would not come in / I meant, not even if asked/ And I hadn't been."; the poem plays and concludes here with the Pathetic Fallacy." (For the song, see my www.habitableworlds.com, Click up top on Birdtalk.)
Currently I highly recommend a new international website,
www.zoomusicology.com Click on the R, "Zoomusicologists," and scroll down past my name Powers to T, Hollis Taylor, an Australian composer and bird expert. Click on Pied Butcherbird MP3. Eight seconds of sheer artistry by a bird from Alice Springs, 2000 kilometers from Taylor's home in Eastern Australia.

[Don Gagnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Powers is an articulate, well traveled, naturalist, musician, literary scholar, and author who generously shares his unique understanding of Birdtalk with authenticity, skill, and humor. His multi disciplinary approach to inter species communication is thought provoking, delightful, and insightful.

Outside the Supreme Court of our nation’s capital, encountering “the Supreme Mocker,” a gifted Mockingbird perched atop a “finial eagle’s wing” prompted the author to reminisce about two turkeys—Benjamin Franklin‘s nominee for national bird—magnificently taking flight from a rural road. And then, turning attention with playful eloquence, the author returned to the cleverly named chapter’s featured bird, a master of vocal mischief:

“But back to D.C. On summer days those Supreme Court flagpoles host another avian on top of one eagle: here sits the court jester, a Mockingbird. I whistle back the intervals and appogiaturas, the descending minor thirds, the demiquavers of his grabbag of melody: the Cardinal’s descending sixth glissando, the Carolina Wren’s “Mexican Hat Dance” theme. No thrush song this morning, so perhaps he observes some diurnal decorum. Would thrashers usually complete their full song in the evening. Pentatonic, it is the same scale as the blues. Many bird notes, like blue notes, fall between two diatonic notes. When thrushes sing the blues, they sound like Stan Getz were he to play the flute. The notes float and sail.”

Reference

Powers, Alan, & Powers, Susan Mohl (illustr.) (2002, Sep. 6). “Birdtalk: Conversations with Birds.” Berkeley, CA: Frog Books. The Supreme Mocker, pp. 63-4.

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humans tend to humanise birds. They are pretty songsters that are good for the human soul. Or as Michaela Strachan phrased it recently on Springwatch: she loves it when birds start to sing their songs and "set up homes and have babies". Enter an image of thrushes pushing prams around IKEA. Alan Powers writes with this sort of delicious, tongue-in-cheek approach in Bird Talk . He has one eye on Romanticism and one eye on the Age of Reason. And listens to birds as they are, not as humans think. Harmonious choristers? There was little of that with the fledgeling starlings in my garden this week. Barely out of its nest and one knew how to give a warning call and peck its parent, or continually chirrup as a parental location system. A bird version of the baby alarm. And the terrible cacophony that ensued a few days later when an adult starling had to defend its suet ball, something out of a horror movie, had little to do with concordant beauty. All of this, and much more, is understood by the author and expressed in witty prose.

Rather than make birds like humans this book makes the human like the avian. It abounds with ringing, detailed, annoyed, joyful, vexed, eccentric writing. The author's world of opera, jazz, poetry and prose frequently appears in the leaves of Bird Talk . Like the polyglot Gilbert White, Powers has a command of numerous languages, but these do not detract, as the author uses his knowledge judiciously... and exuberantly. And that is the over-riding quality of this book , it bounces along, analysing and reproducing bird-song, like a curious robin, looking at bird curiosities and human oddities on the way.

I enjoyed his chapters on "Song, Assault or Mockery", "Avian therapy", and "Literary Birds" enormously.

Bird Talk is a fine example of nature writing in the tradition of Thoreau.

[Jerry Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a singer/songwriter/indie-rocker who has a side that loves instrumental music of an improvisatory nature like jazz and avant-garde experimental music. I have also always been a casual birdwatcher.
In 2003 I was recording my first all instrumental cd and one morning during this time I was sitting on my front porch playing my nylon string guitar when it seemed that there was a bird in the tree of my yard imitating my riffs. If I played a phrase quick staccato notes the bird would answer with quick staccato notes. If I raised the pitch he would raise his pitch. Soon other birds were joining in. I ran and put a microphone outside the porch door in a stand pointing toward the tree and another in the porch on my classical guitar. The birds and I proceeded to record a wonderful improvised jam on my 4-track that ended up on my cd Finding You.
Since that experience I've recorded more with birds and other found sounds and many improvisations with just guitars, instruments and other musicians but now these are always under the name The Birdwatcher Experiment.
Ten years ago I also christened my home recording studio as Birdwatcher Studios and my mother in law gave me the book BirdTalk as a gift. I read some of it at the time but for some reason I never picked it up and gave it a thorough reading until this summer. It is a wonderful book filled with great insight into the nature of birdsong and our own birdlike inclinations. Many bird books seem too dry and scientific but the musician and poet comes out strong in Alan Powers and speaks vividly and in a way that appeals to the artistic type. It is obvious that Powers is a poet and a lover of poetry. I really enjoyed the chapter on literary birds.
I read this book like a devotional. Mostly reading it in the morning with coffee while watching and listening to the birds at the feeders in my backyard. Thank you for a joyful and inspiring book! I'm going to promote this book among all the other bird loving rockers and poets I know.

[Derrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powers’ short trot through the avian world is a spectacular feat. A multi-modal study of literature, linguistics, musicology, and history. With a deep knowledge of these areas Powers humbly ponders after listening. The power of listening is at the forefront here as his witty prose stylings guide us through the conversations with birds he has had and his catalog of bird talk across literature and history.

While Powers does take measures to help the reader out, in order to get the complete experience, one has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of music theory and basic terms. Being able to sight-sing (sight-whistle?) would make a quicker read for sure. But I had to clunkily play the notation parts on an acoustic guitar to hear the melody before trying to whistle the tune and I made it through. Being well read in history and poetry helps when he gets to those parts as well. Still, even without these tools, Powers does a great job of contextualizing the sounds outside of notation when he can and contextualizing the poems and history he writes about as well.



I could see this book being read by bird watchers that want to better unlock their ears and I could see it being read and quoted by a scholar of ecocriticism or ecolinguistics. A book for the curious layman or the scholar.

A new edition of the book is slated for Winter 2022-23 from Inner Traditions Press out of Rochester, Vermont under the new title, “Conversations with Birds: The Metaphysics of Bird and Human Communication.”

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

"BirdTalk" is what I wish more books were more like--owning that range and reach common to the enstouted tissue: of such artefacts as Thoreau's "Walden" and Pound's "Cantos". That is to say, the searching quotation and inhabitation of the living rock--or more generously, the bird or daimon--the panoply of sounds: a field-guide, a survey of several literatures, a satire--part journal, almanack, linguistic debate--catalogue and catafalque for this or that gone era. It is handsomely illustrated and contains many a birdnote transposed from the breath of Morning--that Greek springtime of the mind, heard "In ancient days by emperor and clown"--transposed, yes, to the uncluttered staves staggering many a chapter. It is not a long book--but it is difficult to review because it contains so much.

[Susan Mohlpowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan the musical man I have lived with all these years would sit on our front deck and when a bird would whistle he would whistle back and slightly change the whistle and get a conversation going. When the scientists play for the birds exactly what they said they would attack the speaker.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am very impressed with the research and work Alan Powers has done with communicating with the birds.
I only wish my own favorite backyard friends would understand me.
But they seem to know when I am scattering food, and gather accordingly, so I am happy with that.
This is a good book if you actually want to understand our feathered neighbors.