“Birds talk to each other. We can understand it. And it’s fun!” -Joe Ellis, Audubon Board Member
What Is Bird Language?
The communication network of birds is a vast, complex, and delicate instrument. Pressure to survive, evade predators, and find food has shaped our winged companions’ perceptive and communicative capacities over eons.
Even more amazing is that humans can easily tap into the conversations that arise in this communication network. Bird language is a way for us to learn about what’s happening across a landscape, including whether predators are present or the discovery of a food source. Since the beginning of human history, we have used this communication network for survival. Certain modern Indigenous peoples continue to live in a pattern deeply dependent on bird language for survival.
Many people who have studied bird language deeply have reported that making the connection to this ancient and universal language has awakened something within them. Many report that training themselves to tune in at this level has given them an edge in all kinds of endeavors in their modern lives – including their perception of dynamics of complex human interactions, expanded creativity and a heightened sense of interdependence.
By learning bird language, we can gain greater insight into the processes and events occurring across a landscape. Through bird language, we can understand our own relationship to, and role in stewarding, the entire ecological system.
This program brings a time-tested educational workshop in nature connection to a national scale through partnerships with major conservation organizations such as our current partner, the National Audubon Society.
“I think the best way I can describe Bird Language in my job is that it is like being tuned into a radio station on my way to work and getting all the updates, from the weather, to traffic, to happenings in and around the area; Bird Language condenses a whole lot of information for us into a few calls that we can easily absorb, process, and react to out in the bush.” – Alwyn Myburgh (African guide in the Kalahari)
History of Bird Language
For as long as humans have interacted closely with the land and animals, the behavior of the birds has been interpreted – in varying degrees of accuracy and for many different purposes. Common patterns of behavior exist in birds around the world. These patterns can indicate to observers the whereabouts of unseen people, predators, and other animals on the landscape.
This type of knowledge is common in hunter-gather societies and is still evident in cultures today ranging from the peoples in the Amazon jungle to those living in the arid Kalahari desert. The mythologies and epic tales of many ancient cultures convey, in often veiled tones, the mysterious nature of the utility that comes from developing a sensitivity to bird language – the ability to detect the unseen, an indispensable tool for both the hunter and protector.
Remnants of this ancient knowledge also exist in patches within the industrialized culture that has spread across the world, isolated into the realm of hunters and quiet observers of the forest and field.
At least one Apache group of the Sierra Madre before the turn of the last century explored the art to a high degree. The high peaks surrounding their mountain rancherias provided ideal locations for observing the movements of birds from a distance in order to detect the movement of enemy forces. This knowledge has moved through time down to the present day through mentoring in deep nature connection. Jon Young, author of What the Robin Knows, has been a recipient of this lineage of detailed understanding of bird behavior. In this blog, Jon and other skilled practitioners share stories and reflections about this unique art form that Jon calls bird language.