Waking up while listening to birds singing

Some sad and happy bird stories

Today, I woke up with this beautiful sunrise. The bright light is one of the reasons why I enjoy living in Ottawa. We have many days with a blue sky while the snow reflects the bright sunlight. Wearing sunglasses while wearing warm winter clothes brings back memories of skiing trips when I lived in Austria. 

Just before opening the curtains, I listened to a bird. It was singing songs that I didn’t recognize from any early morning bird’s song that I ever heard in Europe. Birds have to learn to sing their repertoire by listening to the grownups; it is very much like we have learned to speak from our parents. 

This week a paper was published about the declining song culture of regent honeyeaters. It is a sad story, which makes me reluctant to write about it during the weekend. 

Those of you that follow me on Twitter may know that I try to send out only ‘happy tweets’ on the weekend. It balances the sad stories during the week about everything that we so mismanage on this small planet. I guess it keeps me sane to focus for a few days on the outdoors, wildlife, art, or kindness. You may have noticed that I sometimes smuggle a bit and count the Friday as part of the weekend as well. 

Since this newsletter didn’t even exist the last weekend, it is too early for me to say what you will find in The Planet on the weekends, but I will likely focus on the positive news. Nor can I tell you if I will even write on the weekends. I don’t know yet. I aim for a minimum of hundred posts per year, so about two per week, but there are no fixed days that The Planet will appear in your inbox. Let me know if you prefer otherwise. 

Back to those regent honeyeaters. The males are great singers, impressing the females with long and complex songs. But now that they are critically endangered, many of the remaining males in the wild lost their singing skills. The study found that 27 percent were singing the wrong tunes and were not following the regional cultural norm. And 12 percent was even worse; they sang the songs of completely different species. This is sad from a (bird’s) cultural perspective, but it is terrible to find that those who had lost their songs were also less fit and less likely to pair. This is horrible news for this endangered population of a species: it was known for roaming in huge flocks in east Australia.

Since we are entering the weekend, there was positive bird news as well this week. Wisdom, at the age of 70, the oldest known bird on the planet, hatched a new chick last month at Midway Atoll. This is thought to be her 40th chick; congratulations, Wisdom.

That’s it for today. Thank you all so much for your early support in the past few days. In five days, the email list has grown to a few hundred. I especially appreciate those of you that decided in this early stage to support this initiative by subscribing to The Planet. That is a huge motivation.

Let me add the button once more to convince you to join as well. 

Enjoy your weekend, always happy to hear from you.

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Notes:

https://theconversation.com/only-the-lonely-an-endangered-bird-is-forgetting-its-song-as-the-species-dies-out-156950

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/albatross-wisdom-wild-bird-chick-b1810489.html