A Quote by Gordon Hempton

I believe that our distant nomadic ancestors came forward and survived because they could hear distant, faint birdsong as an acoustic navigational beacon, if you will, and by moving toward the birdsong, they were able to find places with shelter, food, and water, and a prosperous growing region. Indeed, birdsong is the number one indicator of habitats prosperous to humans.

Gordon Hempton

Quote Topics

Able Acoustic Ancestors Beacon Because Believe Birdsong Came Could Distant Faint Find Food Forward Growing Hear Humans I Believe Indeed Indicator Moving Nomadic Number Our Places Prosperous Region Shelter Survived Toward Water Were Will

Quote Author

Gordon Hempton
Author

You can listen to a birdsong, and from the content of the birdsong, you will be able to determine whether or not the bird grew up in a noise-polluted environment or whether it grew up in a pristine, clean environment. Isn't that incredible?

Gordon Hempton

People who record birdsong generally do it very early-before six o'clock-if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud.

Richard Adams

At these times, the things that troubled her seemed far away and unimportant: all that mattered was the hum of the bees and the chirp of birdsong, the way the sun gleamed on the edge of a blue wildflower, the distant bleat and clink of grazing goats.

Alison Croggon

The most sensitive frequencies are at the resonant frequencies of the auditory canal. In other words, the ear has shaped itself to naturally amplify certain bandwidth. And that corresponds to sounds in that bandwidth that were most important to our evolving ancestors to hear, in order to survive. And it doesn't match the human voice. It matches birdsong.

Gordon Hempton

Better a sparrow, living or dead, than no birdsong at all.

Catullus

Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden.

David Mitchell

People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years, they have learnt when the birds sing, they are safe; it's when birds stop singing that people need to worry.

Julian Treasure

It's more eerie to be alone in a city that's lit up and functioning than one that's a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.

Isaac Marion

I woke early like a condemned man to the naivety of birdsong.

Nick Drake

Unlike so many other sounds, there's no maximum exposure to birdsong.

Julian Treasure

I remember as a child, my grandmother read to me Silent Spring. It was incomprehensible to me that there could be a world without birdsong.

Terry Tempest Williams

Birdsong brings relief to my longing. I am just as ecstatic as they are, but with nothing to say.

Rumi

I would like to die as I have lived disappear among the tundra winds be transformed into birdsong

Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

Edward Hoagland

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.