Birdsong Heralds the Return of Spring!
How astonishing to find that bird song is very controversial!
Here are debates raging right now in the scientific community:
- Is it song?
- Is it language?
- Is it a survival tool?
- Is it learned?
- Is it spontaneous?
- How/when did dinosaurs evolve feathers, turn into birds, and start singing?
Starting from a Biblical foundation, we can quickly understand many things about bird song that might escape our attention if we are busy chasing the wrong philosophy up the wrong tree.
First, birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Since birds were created on day five of Creation week, and dinosaurs (land animals) were created on day six of Creation week, this would have been a physical impossibility. That one fact, if acknowledged, would save the world millions of dollars in research money.
Second, song birds (not all birds sing songs) do access the harmonic series, which is God's framework for music. The intervals they sing are musical intervals. This is why their songs are so beautiful: they are singing highly condensed, complex patterns of music. Classical music functions the same way: repeated patterns of intervals.
Third, Spring is the time of bird song not just for mating purposes. It is also the time of plants bursting out new leaves. Bird song and bird chirping frequencies seem to be the very frequencies to which plants respond. In the morning, when the air is filled with a chorus of bird song, the plants respond by opening their stomata, which enables the dew and nutrients to enter their cells. Could this be one reason the jubilant bird-chorus falls silent as Fall approaches?
Fourth, birds do communicate with one another with the sounds they make. Although we might not know exactly what we are saying, we can communicate with them, too, by mimicking their sounds back to them. They have songs of joy and relaxation, songs for mating, sounds for warning or distress, comforting sounds for communicating with their offspring, etc. These songs and sounds might not constitute an actual language, but they are communication.