Drawn To Both Heat And Food

From the apartment’s open window come two seconds of whistled melody, then a quiet chitter like an afterthought. A pause for another couple of seconds, then the song repeats, a new arrangement of fluted warbles, crowned with a soft squeak. The song continues for ten minutes, each phrase a variation of whistles and short trills. A Eurasian blackbird perches on the apartment building’s gutter and casts his song into the courtyard. The paved space is enclosed on all four sides by high walls, and so the sound is trapped, reverberating and bouncing back to me in lush, vigorous tones as I listen from my window on the fifth floor. As he sings, the bare walls are gilded and the cool, dewy air of this May morning glows. Usually, this center courtyard in a Parisian apartment block is an acoustic annoyance, catching and transmitting to every window the clatter of rubbish bins on concrete pavers and the chatter of passing residents. But the blackbird uses this space to his advantage, posting himself at its rim and pouring in his song. I’m astonished to hear such sonic beauty from a bird in an unexpected place. There are no trees in the courtyard, yet the song blooms here as if in a wooded valley. The French name for the bird, merle, captures some of the spirit of the sound, rolling on the tongue like his introductory whistles. I rented this small apartment in Paris for a few days, expecting nothing more than a convenient place to stay while I visited family.

A Fool No More

But the blackbird’s song woke one of my earliest memories. Without my understanding why, the sound felt deeply familiar, in the same way that the aromas of foods from early youth can evoke memories of belonging. As a child, I lived in a similar apartment in Paris, but until this moment I had no conscious memory of any bird there. Later, my mother confirmed that, yes, a blackbird sang every spring from the courtyard and small roof garden behind our apartment on Rue Tiphaine. She said that for her, the blackbird’s song was a reminder of the richness of the dawn chorus of birds in the English countryside of her youth. The song was a welcome sign of spring but also melancholy in its aloneness, missing the dozens of other species that sing alongside the blackbird outside the city. Nearly half a century had passed since I last heard a blackbird singing in a courtyard, but the melody and timbre of the sound somehow traveled with me all those years, held in the sparkle of electrical charges on the fatty membranes of my nerve cells. When the sound came to me again, years later, these energies woke and pushed feelings of delight and warmth into consciousness. Nonhuman apes and monkeys have excellent memory for visual and tactile experience, but these powers seem not to extend to sound, especially in the long term. Humans, though, readily recall the nuances of sounds. The sound of a loved one’s voice. A melody from childhood or adolescence.

Never Give Up

The pronunciation and meanings of words, even those unused and unheard for decades. The soundscapes of city streets and backyards. The inflections and textures of the voices of other species. These dwell inside us, acting not as static archives but as living guides to the meanings of sensory experience, activating in an instant. Our sonic memory differs from that of other primates because evolution has reshaped our brains to make us better participants in aural culture. Like many singing birds, human culture is transmitted by sound, as well as by sight and touch. But the cultures of monkeys and nonhuman apes are almost entirely visual and tactile. Recall of both individual sounds and of the feel of soundscapes gave our ancestors points of reference through which to assess and understand new environments. The computers that scientists use to analyze thousands of hours of digital sound in Borneo and elsewhere are an extension of an ancient human capacity for place reading through sound. Listening to the blackbird’s voice bloom, I have a strong feeling that he is using the space to his advantage, like a human singer finding a favorable performance spot. Acquaintances tell me of blackbirds holding forth at the rim of courtyards in Berlin and London, creating stunning aural displays. Intention is hard to prove, though.

After The Thunder

Perhaps the birds perch at random throughout their territories, sometimes happening upon reverberant spaces. But such insensitivity seems unlikely for a bird whose energies are largely devoted to song for much of the year, starting in earnest in January, peaking in April and May, then declining through the summer and autumn. Surely, he is a connoisseur of the qualities of his voice in the world, listening, remembering, and adjusting just as he did as a youngster when he learned his song through attentive listening and studious refinement through practice? Such improvisational and flexible use of the city accords with the rest of the bird’s biology. Now blackbirds are common wherever trees are scattered among buildings or in the city’s many parks, large and small. The same is true across much of Western Europe. Before the nineteenth century, blackbirds were forest specialists, living only in wooded countryside. As they colonized cities, their voices, behavior, and physiology changed. The song that I remember from my childhood has within it the imprint of the city. Urban colonization started in winter. These birds were likely drawn to both heat and food. The city is usually several degrees warmer than the countryside. Seeds and fruits in gardens and parks, along with spilled and discarded food from domestic animals and humans, increased the allure. Blackbirds were joined in this winter move to the city by other birds like greenfinches, blue tits, and mallards. These innovators thrived and soon started breeding within the city, abandoning their ancestral woodlands and marshes and becoming urban creatures. Birds on other continents have made similar adaptations to urban life, often breeding at higher densities in the city than in rural areas. House sparrows, European starlings, and rock pigeons are among the most widely distributed animals on the planet.