What are you reading now?

[aeolium]

I am currently reading The Pilgrim's Progress for no other reason than that I have never read it and feel I should read a book that was so influential (the closest I got to it was seeing a puppet version by a very good Welsh puppet company when I was a child).

But I would very much like to read Bird Sense as birds are an endless source of fascination to me. That there is a chapter on 'Emotions' is intriguing, as is the absence of one on communication.

[Richard Tarleton]

I've just finished Max Hastings' magisterial history of World War 2, "All Hell Let Loose". The book moves sure-footedly between political, strategic and battlefield accounts and personal stories, and charts the impact of the war on civilian populations in all areas of conflict. Mastery of material, assured judgements....Anthony Beevor has been working on a similar project - this will be a hard act to follow.

[Petrushka]

I've just finished Max Hastings' magisterial history of World War 2, "All Hell Let Loose". The book moves sure-footedly between political, strategic and battlefield accounts and personal stories, and charts the impact of the war on civilian populations in all areas of conflict. Mastery of material, assured judgements....Anthony Beevor has been working on a similar project - this will be a hard act to follow.

This is amongst my 'to read' pile. Presumably you have read Max Hastings' other hefty volumes, Armageddon and Nemesis? Both are unforgettable. For all their virtues (and they are many) I do wish that Hastings and not Beevor had written Berlin and Stalingrad. Quite how MH manages to fit in his writing and research with his TV and journalism work is something of a minor mystery.

[Richard Tarleton]

This is amongst my 'to read' pile. Presumably you have read Max Hastings' other hefty volumes, Armageddon and Nemesis? Both are unforgettable. For all their virtues (and they are many) I do wish that Hastings and not Beevor had written Berlin and Stalingrad. Quite how MH manages to fit in his writing and research with his TV and journalism work is something of a minor mystery.

Yes indeed, great books both.

The comparison with Beevor is an interesting one - I think Beevor is great on the nuts and bolts of military history, and I like his prolific use of maps (All Hell Let Loose could perhaps have done with one or two more). But Hastings' analysis, character sketches, conclusions, and the humanity he brings to the subject, make him outstanding in this genre. I daresay (in answer to your final point) that he has some help on the research front, but whether or not this is the case his command of his material is outstanding. Quite what there is left for Beevor to say I'm not sure

[Chris Newman]

I am nearing the end of John Tyrrell's magnificent biography of Janacek. It has taken months. I have done it in association with listening to much of his music as the books progressed. I am so happy that in the process I rediscovered The Excursions of Mr Broucek and to have discovered much of his choral music and songs.

When John Carey's on William Golding film came on the BBC a few weeks ago I took a week off Janacek to read his book on WG.

[hackneyvi]

But I would very much like to read Bird Sense as birds are an endless source of fascination to me. That there is a chapter on 'Emotions' is intriguing, as is the absence of one on communication.

Can you recommend any approachable books on birds and communication, particularly, aeolium?

I stood and listened to two birds tonight. One stood in a high tree across the road from my house; I couldn't see it. The other moved from a tree beside the house to another tree further up the street, at the corner. They spoke in formal alternation, each speech following a short pause after the other's diverse group of phrases. A very modernist music - unbridged fragments of the piercing, burbled, crowed, staccato, cadenced.

I walked along to the corner to try to see and eventually made her out in silhhouette against the night sky and she looked to be the shape of a wren; blunt with the very tilted tail.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/birdsong.shtml

[Richard Tarleton]

I stood and listened to two birds tonight. One stood in a high tree across the road from my house; I couldn't see it. The other moved from a tree beside the house to another tree further up the street, at the corner. They spoke in formal alternation, each speech following a short pause after the other's diverse group of phrases. A very modernist music - unbridged fragments of the piercing, burbled, crowed, staccato, cadenced.

I walked along to the corner to try to see and eventually made her out in silhhouette against the night sky and she looked to be the shape of a wren; blunt with the very tilted tail.

Vi, your bird was a "him" - only male birds sing (with one or two exceptions, e.g. robins in winter, when females also hold feeding territories) though all birds have a range of other vocalisations - contact calls, alarm calls etc. You describe two territorial males establishing the invisible dotted line that separates their breeding territories. The territorial function is primary - attracting females is for the most part secondary, though it is primary for certain reedbed species like sedge warblers where the males arrive on territory from migration first and sing to attract females.

I'm assuming you're in London? Wren song includes a musical jingle ending in a long metallic buzz, blackbirds (more likely to be seen silhouetted in the way you describe) obviously bigger and have a rich variety of contralto phrases but always with an "unmusical ending". I used to have a blackbird whose song was the opening line of "O God our help in ages past". Joan Hall-Craggs did a lot of research on the subject - google her name.

A better bet than Ferney's link (which includes some wintering species, wildfowl, birds of prey, specialist species of western oakwoods) is the BTO's CD of garden bird songs - a good place to start. I'm doing a "dawn chorus" guided walk in early May but it might be a bit far for you to come!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A better bet than Ferney's link (which includes some wintering species, wildfowl, birds of prey, specialist species of western oakwoods) is the BTO's CD of garden bird songs - a good place to start. I'm doing a "dawn chorus" guided walk in early May but it might be a bit far for you to come!

Spooky coincidence #6098473: I bought this CD (together with the booklet that accompanies it) only yesterday from a Garden Centre! It is good: Sample puts similar-sounding birdcalls next to each other so that the subtle differences are made clearer (and he puts their "songs" next to their alarm calls).

[Richard Tarleton]

Just re-read, after a 30-year interval, Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes. I first came across mention of it in the preface to the revised version of John Fowles' The Magus, in which he acknowledges its influence. I then heard it as a Book at Bedtime, soon after which I read it. I'm still puzzled by it - in search of enlightenment, I came across this article by Julian Barnes. A haunting, atmospheric, oddly constructed tale. Presumably it is Valentine who appears in the fourth paragraph from the end, sweeping the step. Any further enlightenment gratefully received.

[DracoM]

A wonderful, mesmeric book. It reads like a series of dreams connected by image rather than narrative thread. You feel as if you are walking down the same road but that you keep missing the action which is just ahead of you round the corner and all you get is the swirl of a skirt disappearing, a half heard conversation that dies away, or glimpsed uncertainly across fields at twilight. Tragic evocation of the young moving to rhythms and impulses inside them that impel and drive beyond the comprehension of the more sober around them, narratives about themselves that are scarcely credible to the outsider but the only truth to those experiencing them.


Just reading The Death of Grass / John Christopher

[Richard Tarleton]

Wonderfully put, thank you

[aeolium]

Can you recommend any approachable books on birds and communication, particularly, aeolium?

Sorry for the belated response, hackneyvi - I have been away from the boards due to visitors and then my own visiting.

I'm afraid not, though I love Richard Mabey's books on birds and wild flowers - his Birds Britannica, with Mark Cocker, is worth reading. I just thought it was a pity that none of those intrepid Victorian naturalists had spent a lifetime studying the calls and song of birds to try and work out patterns of communication, however difficult this task is. And a work like Bird Sense which purports to imagine the experience of birds shouldn't be shirking the challenge of exploring birds' communication.

There was a series of talks by Richard Mabey on R3 last year IIRC - either in the Essay or the 20 Minutes slot - including a discussion of birdsong and the many different types of song used by thrushes and blackbirds for instance. It is one thing to listen to samples of birdsong but I would like to know what different songs mean. It needs a fantastic amount of painstaking observation and study - the sort of thing that perhaps went out with the Victorians.

[amateur51]

A better bet than Ferney's link (which includes some wintering species, wildfowl, birds of prey, specialist species of western oakwoods) is the BTO's CD of garden bird songs - a good place to start. I'm doing a "dawn chorus" guided walk in early May but it might be a bit far for you to come!

Blimey! A bargain @ £1.99 instead of £7.99

[Richard Tarleton]

There was a series of talks by Richard Mabey on R3 last year IIRC - either in the Essay or the 20 Minutes slot - including a discussion of birdsong and the many different types of song used by thrushes and blackbirds for instance. It is one thing to listen to samples of birdsong but I would like to know what different songs mean. It needs a fantastic amount of painstaking observation and study - the sort of thing that perhaps went out with the Victorians.

There's a large literature on birdsong, using the full range of modern technology not available to Victorian naturalists. I met (and briefly assisted with his fieldwork) a New Zealand ornithologist who was carrying out a study into regional differences in chaffinch song in the Old and New worlds (chaffinches having been introduced to the Antipodes and developed yet more local variations in their song). Here's another link to Joan Hall-Craggs

It's a mistake to imagine that birdsong "means" anything in an anthropomorphic sense - it has evolved, in different ways among different species, for specific biological purposes - establishing territories, warning off rival males, impressing females, etc. This can include volume, number of phrases, and doubtless other characteristics not discernible to our ear, much in the same way as colour and behaviour achieve these biological functions.