Love songs, war cries and lies

When we begin to hear birdsong as language, we hear the intention of survival instead of just some pretty sounds

- Sharad Apte

A male Common iora; and (below) Sharad Apte.

(Sharad Apte)

In Act 3, Scene 5 of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the lovers spend the night together after their secret wedding. It is here that their first argument unfolds. Romeo prepares to leave after hearing a birdcall, assuming it to be the rising call of a lark. Juliet insists that it is not yet daybreak. She tells him that he has mistaken the nightingale's song for that of the lark. Romeo, however, remains certain that it is the lark announcing the morning.

The difference between the nightingale and the lark is as vast and as narrow as night and day. These birds mark the duality of the lovers' relationship: union and separation, night and morning, life and death. Shakespeare must have known the significance of birdsong at daybreak. For centuries, humans have relied on birds to infer time, weather, and even a sense of safety. Yet it is important to remember that just as the lark in Shakespeare's play was not on a mission to warn the lovers of their separation, birds around us do not sing for our amusement. As American ecologist and philosopher David Abram aptly remarks, they are speaking to the world to which they belong.

But what is this world? And how do birds use their voices to live, to survive and to reproduce? I begin with Romeo and Juliet to open a discussion on the not-so-secret and very vocal love lives of birds.