Birds, Birds, Birds....

Tippi Hedren

So having seen the Voice Project's Ideas of Flight last weekend, it keeps striking me how birds are very much in the public consciousness at the moment, the Zeitgeist or what!? There's Peter Cowdrey's compositions and works where he takes birdsong, slows it down, records humans imitating it, then plays the recordings back to birds who recognise and respond! http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/30/claxton-norfolk-beautiful-music-birdsong


Waveney and Blyth Valley Arts are focusing on 'The Famous Five' for their project this year, taking groups of people into local schools to introduce young people to five of the region's most interesting feathered inhabitants.http://www.waveneyandblytharts.com/

Among young songsmiths there's Beth Orton who professes a personal link with birds and uses their song in her latest cd Sugaring Season and its accompanying videos, the single 'Magpie was released last autumn; Laura Marlings latest album due out 27th May is entitled 'Once I was an eagle', and includes the tracks I was an eagle, Master hunter and Little Bird.http://www.lauramarling.com/

Even Hitchcock's film The Birds and bird-beaten actor Tippi Hedren seem to have been featured in the media ad infinitum recently, in tv's The Girl, etc.

This year's cold winter has driven more unusual birds into our gardens in desperation for food, but that doesn't mean there are increasing numbers, though perhaps we are more aware of them.And in the words of an earlier singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, 'Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got til it's gone...'

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