Birdsong

Available for over a year

Tim Birkhead explores how birds learn to sing. The second of five essays inspired by the musical content of the first Earth Music Bristol festival. How do birds acquire their songs? The answer is mainly through learning. He'll discuss how their predisposition to learn, during a very specific time window, allows us to manipulate what they sing and how important that has been for our own culture by talking about an experiment he did looking at what bird song does to our brain. All of this will be illustrated with examples from canaries, nightingales, bullfinches and some others. Tim Birkhead is a Professor at the University of Sheffield and a fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of The Wisdom of Birds and, forthcoming, Bird Sense among many books. Producer: Tim Dee.