Watching Birds

Every sixth DVD watched at casa de Wendelin these days is from a David Attenborough series called The Life of Birds. (I say every sixth: the number is precise because we've ordered our Netflix queue that way.) Now, why my dear husband looked at this DVD and thought, Just the thing for a snowy evening, I have no idea. I, personally, would have moved on to something with a title less soporific. I daresay any person with a normal-sized head would have.


But order that very title my husband did, in his typically giant-headed way. The first DVD in said series landed up in the mailbox unannounced (to me). I might have done an actual double take upon reading the title. I looked at its jacket, the blurb confirmed my worst fears.

Researchers traverse the globe, exploring 42 countries and examining more than 300 species of birds using a variety of techniques.

I mean, seriously! I hid the disc at the bottom of the to-be-watched pile, but the day finally came when there was nothing to do but pop it in the player, grit my teeth, prop my eyelids up with matches and prepare to watch The Life of Birds.

It was good. *gulp* Really. That Attenborough fellow may be a tad effeminate (and gay as the day is long) but he's brilliant. And what do you know, those birds turned out to be just the thing for frustratingly non-snowy evenings, at least, if not actually snowy ones.

Birds are creazy weird. Some, like the Shoebill Stork, make you wonder why there aren't any shoebill storks in horror movies, because, you know, you hear a name like "shoebill stork" and you think, aaah, a stork. Cute.

See, now that is the picture in your head when you hear "stork".

This, however, is what the shoebill stork looks like.

This picture does not even begin to convey the sense of ancient menace you get from a moving, hunting shoebill stork. Its eyes are beady, focused, calculating. Its gigantic beak doesn't even have the decency to be a blunt instrument; it ends in a deadly hook. You watch this "stork" open its beak to swallow an enormous lungfish whole (after crushing its skull first as a courtesy)... A bag of skin opens down from its lower beak, and suddenly you realise what this bird reminds you of: a T-Rex straight out of Jurassic Park. The resemblace, believe me, is uncanny. *shudder*

Fortunately for our mental wellbeing, the programme does not dwell on Creepy Evil-ass Dinosaurs in stork clothing for too long. It moves on to other birds that amaze in much pleasanter ways, like the Lyrebird, whose repertoire is 80% mimicry. This mad, weird creature (I mean, it's got twin bison-horns coming out of either side of its butt) began to imitate the sounds it hears in the forest: the calls of other birds like cuckoos and whatnot, animals, the gurgling of streams, and then - wait for it - the clicking of cameras. Even different types of cameras - whirring, mechanical droning, shutters, you name it. Perfectly imitated.

We were absolutely thunderstruck, and kept rewinding the disc to listen to it again. And then that crazy bird began to imitate a chainsaw. And then a car alarm. Wikipedia now tells me it can imitate rifle shots, barking dogs, crying babies, all kinds of machinery, explosions, and musical instruments.

In 1969, a park ranger, Neville Fenton, recorded a lyrebird song which resembled flute sounds in the New England National Park near Dorrigo in northern coastal New South Wales. After much detective work by Fenton, it was discovered that in the 1930's, a flute player living on a farm adjoining the park used to play tunes near his pet lyrebird. The lyrebird adopted the tunes into his repertoire, and retained them after release into the park. Neville Fenton forwarded a tape of his recording to Norman Robinson. At first, the tune sounded jumbled. But because a lyrebird is able to carry two tunes at the same time, Robinson filtered out one tune at a time and put it on the phonograph for the purposes of analysis. The song represents a modified version of two popular tunes in the 1930's: "The Keel Row" and "Mosquito's Dance".

I'll let you catch your breath, now, but after that you people have got to watch this series somehow.