{"id":8038,"date":"2016-03-03T11:56:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T15:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=8038"},"modified":"2016-03-03T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T21:44:11","slug":"ill-sing-for-some-supper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=8038","title":{"rendered":"I’ll sing for some supper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"W-wren\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The abbey is a great place for bird-watching. I feel guilty that I’m not more systematic about bird watching and that I’m not better at identifying birds.<\/p>\n

Just as interesting as watching the birds, though, is listening to and studying bird song, because the abbey is a very quiet place except for bird song. Maybe because I have an ear for music and for language and for accents, I’m very familiar with the bird songs that I commonly hear, although I usually have no idea which species of bird I’m hearing. I tend to hear both words and music in bird song. For sample, the bird that says, “Diaz! Diaz! Diaz!” with a lisping Castilian accent is, I think, a male cardinal. There’s another bird that says “Whip her! Whip her! Whip her!” with a country accent. I don’t know who that is. Another bird (a wren?) says, “Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheese!” Another bird (I heard it this very morning) sings, “Beet sugar! Beet sugar! Beet sugar!”<\/p>\n

While Googling to make sure that I wasn’t stupidly misidentifying the bird in this photo (is it a sparrow?) and while looking at a page on house wrens, I saw that an old book published around 1921 actually did musical transcriptions for many birds:<\/p>\n

\"SHouseWren\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I have ordered that book. Since the book was published before 1923, I believe that it would now be in the public domain.<\/p>\n

Here is one of these, a wren song, played on the abbey organ, six flats and all. I apologize for the keyboard clatter. The camera is right over the keyboards. Also, I’m sure that the bird’s actual tempo is a good bit faster than I can play this phrase with only a minute’s practice:<\/p>\n

\"SHouseWren-line-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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