Songs Of Place And Time

There is an established understanding that birdsong is rooted on the premise that each singing bird is only, or predominantly, concerned with intra-specific communication. Yet, on listening to the mass of birds singing at dawn we have intuitively described the phenomenon as a 'chorus'. A close analysis of the whole auditory scene suggests inter-specific structure as well as intra-specific relationships, giving rise to the 'chorus' impression, rather than random cacophony. This publication explores how the arts can represent bird song in general and the dawn chorus in particular through ways that underline each chorus' specific nature of space and place, whilst avoiding the trap of projecting human phenomena onto the more-than-human world.