John Young’s Melbourne Night Parrot talk last night

By peter, on March 2nd, 2015

With perhaps 300(?) others I attended John’s talk at Federation Square last night. We’ve had reports about earlier talks he’s done, so I’m only going to mention a couple of things that stood out for me. 1. John mentioned that the description of the call in P&K is spot on – “A far carrying two note whistle”. I was under the impression that we’d been told that this description wasn’t correct, but I could be wrong. John said that we should imagine the call as two Bell Miner notes, about half a second apart, with the second note half an octave lower. I think he said half an octave – can anyone confirm that? John said there’s also a four note call, but didn’t describe it. 2. John repeated his reasons for not releasing the call. I asked if there was any reason why he couldn’t release a spectrogram of the call, and he expressed his intention to do that “within 12 months”. I think this is an important step towards allowing others to help in the search for more populations. 3. I’m sure we’d been told that in the video the bird hoppped “like a kangaroo”. We watched it three times, and I didn’t see it hop once. Did we see the same video as everyone else? Does this bird hop or not? 4. The bird in the footage had lowered both wings to the ground as it moved around (in a sort of distraction display?). I’m not sure if that’s been mentioned in previous reports of John’s talks. I certainly haven’t seen photos of it before. Thanks to Chris Watson and others for organising the talk, and to John for taking the time to fly down to do it. I greatly appreciated the chance to finally see the footage and more photos for myself. Peter Shute

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carlsclifford

March 3, 2015 at 2:00 pm

James, Good work. I will keep my ears open for the JMJO on the steam wireless. Carl Clifford

jamesmustafamusic

March 3, 2015 at 12:41 pm

Thanks Russell, Have written a few things. Majority of my music on my album last year was influence by nature and Australian bird song. Just finished a composition for wind symphony called “Windsong’ that will premiered later in the year. That features direct transcriptions of 20+ Australian birds. Also just been commissioned to write a suite of music for the WAYJO in Perth to be performed at the Perth International Jazz Festival. This suite will represent migration and will once again feature bird song. All the best On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Russell Woodford < rdwoodford@gmail.com> wrote: — All the best, James Mustafa 0400 951 517 http://www.jamesmustafajazzorchestra.com

admin

March 2, 2015 at 11:15 pm

Peter, a lot of musicians have attempted to transcribe birdsong for various reasons. Some have just been fascinated by the songs, others have wanted something more clearly defined than “sweet-pretty-little-creature.” Quite a few composers have used birdsong in their music – these range from programmatic references used by early keyboard composers like Couperin, to the incredibly complex works of Olivier Messiaen, who mimicked birdsong in a large proportion of his works. He wrote an epic set of 13 piano pieces, “Catalogue D’Oiseaux,” each named after a bird, and including a range of the birds calls and song. They are fiendishly difficult to play, but they really do sound JUST LIKE the birdsong! The only one I’ve ever attempted is *L’alouette lulu* (Woodlark) and yes, if it’s played properly, the listener hears the song of a Woodlark (*Lullula arborea*). I’m not sure if I would have managed to call in any Woodlarks when I played it … There was some discussion about Messiaen on birding-aus a few years ago. Syd Curtis, who is known by many of you, took Messiaen to see and hear lyrebirds. James, do you put birdsong into your arrangements? Keen to hear some! Russell

l.knight

March 2, 2015 at 4:47 pm

Thanks Peter. That’s useful. There probably aren’t too many other critters in the hummock grasslands that would be making a call like that in the evening hours, so it may help with the identification of Night Parrot populations. The bottom line is “what gets measured gets managed” … Regards, Laurie. On 2 Mar 2015, at 11:09 am, Peter Shute < pshute@nuw.org.au> wrote:

peter

March 2, 2015 at 1:04 pm

Hi James. That’s the best I could do given John’s description. I’m sure John will think it sounds wrong too because the notes probably don’t really sound exactly like Bell Miner notes, and he probably only guessed the spacing and the drop in frequency. The idea of the mockup was just to give people something more concrete to remember in the future. Hopefully some people out there will remember having heard it in the past! I know birds vary their frequency – I’ve spent a lot of time looking at spectrograms, and I’ve seen it. I don’t know if trying to force bird calls into music terminology is useful to anyone who doesn’t know music and have a good ear for it. I don’t, and when I hear a bird I can’t translate frequencies into those letters you use. You’re probably at an advantage over the rest of use if you can. For me they’re just low, medium, high, descending, ascending, etc, and if I want to try to record a call on paper then I sketch a spectrogram. I’ve got no idea what width and thickness of notes means. Is that about length and harmonics? To me, “dropping half an octave” is actually a very precise description – it means to multiply the frequency by 0.75. Your pitch changing experiments are interesting, and it’s reassuring that you’ve proven birds are very sensitive to it. I’d be interested to hear more about that. Peter Shute

March 2, 2015 at 11:38 am

My only problem with this theory of dropping half an octave and ta-da you’ve got a night parrot is that Bell Miner’s don’t have an exact starting pitch to begin with. I’ve spent a lot of time transcribing bird song into standard notation and graphic music notation but the reality is, it pretty much can only be put into graphic notation due to the fact birds don’t follow our western harmonic rules of equal temperament. A Bell Miner even more interestingly changes its pitch. A brief listen might present a Bell Miner as a constantly resounding F natural when in fact Bell Miner’s sing every degree within a F such as obvious divisions of quarter notes but even to finer degrees than that. This is same reason that eastern harmony in particular Hindustani classical music can sound “out of tune” to our ears when in fact, those cultures just divide notes much finer than us lazy westerners. Bell Miner’s are interesting. I think there pitch is slightly sharpened or flattered due to a whole bunch of reasons such as age, sex, season etc. But to western ears, it all sounds like “F”. Birds don’t follow equal temperate and will sing whatever they bloody want. So by dropping “half an octave” (one of the most general interval changing terms I’ve ever heard in my life) simply won’t get you the pitch of a night parrot call let alone anything close to the exact. Last year I recorded a bunch of birds and then altered the pitch of call by 1/12th and 1/8th of a degree. The pitch was so finely changed, but the birds new about it. Birds such as eastern and crimson rosellas wouldn’t want a bar of this minutely altered pitch. However other birds were unaffected. The only thing I actually think could be gotten out of bell miner comparison call is perhaps the thickness of a note, the very width of a sound. But that’s all I really presume. All the best, James Mustafa 0400 951 517 http://www.jamesmustafajazzorchestra.com

March 2, 2015 at 11:09 am

I’ve made a mockup of the call, if anyone’s interested to listen to it: https://soundcloud.com/petershute/synthesised-night-parrot-call John said they call very rarely, and might only call once, so you could listen all night and miss it because your foot crunched in the gravel at that moment. Before anyone complains that this could be abused, it’s actually two Bell Miner notes. If people want to try to get a Night Parrot to respond to Bell Miner calls, I don’t think they’re going to have much luck. Peter Shute

March 2, 2015 at 9:37 am

It wouldn’t take an expert, Anthea, there are free programs out there for just that. However, spectrograms aren’t a full representation of any sound, and sounds reconstructed from them always sound recognisably different. Given that it appears that the bird barely responds to a recording of its own call, I doubt a reconstructed one would get any response. The programs I’ve seen that will do this have as their prime purpose the generation of amusing sounds – e.g. hear what your written name would sound like if it was a spectrogram – not the reverse engineering of bird calls. John only has to tweak the spectrogram to lose some of the harmonic bands, and the resulting reconstruction would sound quite different. The spectrogram would then only be of use to those trying to analyse existing recordings, of which there are, apparently, many thousands of hours. I don’t think this fear is justified. Peter Shute

flambeau

March 2, 2015 at 9:13 am

I am so grateful to Chris Watson and Birdlife Australia for organizing John Young’s talk last night. I am filled with admiration of John’s persistence, determination and skill in his search – he really deserves his success. Brian and I hope that John Young will NOT release a spectrogram of the Night Parrot’s call. It would be possible for an electronic expert to re-engineer a replica of the bird’s call from that information, and then try to call up the bird with it. Which for such a very shy bird might be fatal. In the short video segment, the bird’s movement was definitely unorthodox – John assured us it was not injured but the action seemed one-sided – a scurrying, bustling hop rather like a crouching version of the Common Mynah’s one-sided fast movement of the ground. At all times the bird kept very low, not lifting its head as several artists have tried depicted it. Incidentally, I was also thrilled with John’s wonderful photos of the Flock Pigeons, both individually and as a mighty flock throwing themselves into water for a hasty drink on the wing. And all his other pictures of birds, beasts and amazing landscapes. The Feral Cat menace has never been made clearer or more urgent. Anthea Fleming On 2/03/2015 8:27 AM, Peter Shute wrote:

davidtorr

March 2, 2015 at 7:37 am

Yes – happy to confirm he said half an octave lower. On 2 March 2015 at 08:27, Peter Shute < pshute@nuw.org.au> wrote:

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John Young’s Melbourne Night Parrot talk last night

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