Review of Listening in the Field: Recording and the Science of Birdsong

Authors

• David D. Vail, University of Nebraska, Kearney

Date of this Version

Fall 2018

Document Type

Article

Citation

Human–Wildlife Interactions (Fall 2018) 12(2): article 14 

doi: 10.26077/72f-ta82

Abstract

In 1962, Rachel Carson penned one of the most powerful and controversial books of the mid-twentieth century. Often credited with launching Earth Day and sparking the environmental movement, Silent Spring argued for changes in agricultural science and wildlife management that considered a greater ecological health. Carson’s first chapter depicts a fictional world where long-term use of entomological and wildlife controls, specifically pesticides, results in the death of all wildlife—a spring without birds: “There was a strange stillness…It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh” (Carson, Silent Spring, 2). Carson’s focus on the absence of birdsong reveals a much longer history of avian influence on wildlife science. Observation, representation, and management emerged as central tools and ornithology, especially birdsong science, helped lead the way.

. . .

The focus on expert communities and the evolution of recording technologies in Listening in the Field has specific relevance for readers of Human–Wildlife Interactions. Studies such as Patricelli, Blickley, Hooper’s (2013) analysis on “Recommended management strategies to limit anthropogenic noise impacts on greater sage-grouse in Wyoming” highlights the role of noise pollution and Bruyninckx’s focus on bioacoustics to study wildlife populations. Also, like the tensions surrounding the politics of conservation and wildlife management described in Feldman’s (2007) “Public opinion, the Leopold Report, and the reform of federal predator control policy,” Listening in the Field illustrates how formal and informal approaches to birdsong recordings helped remake environmental science policies throughout the twentieth century. “Against the background of field biology’s professionalization, the question of who could listen authoritatively and in what way was negotiated largely through sound recordings…recordings acted as concrete technologies of education and attention, training ears and sensibilities of fieldworkers and others” (169). Indeed, wildlife management science—its discoveries and ongoing tensions—shares much with birdsong science, including that “the production and legitimization of scientific records have almost invariably also depended on their distribution as objects of popular instruction, amazement, and joy” (172).