Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1936-05-22
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES &. TRACEWELL.

MY Dear Sir: On May %, at S:35
pm, Eastern standard time, the Educa-
tional Radio Project, Once of Educa-
ton, Department of the Interior, will
present an unusually interesting radio
program based on bird songs and calls.
1t will be heard over an N. B. G. coast
forecast network.
MANY bird lovers and readers of your
distinguished column should be inter-
ested in this broadcast and for this rea-
son am taking this opportunity to Sug-
gest that you bring the program to the
attention of your readers.
Devoted exclusively to the song habits
of birds and peculiarities of their Ian
guage,' tie program is the eleventh in
the Have You Heard series.
May we invite you and your readers
to tune in on this broadcast? We shall
be glad to receive the reaction of all
listeners to this program. Yours very
truly, B. P. B."
Bird songs are among the most beau
tiful yet at the same time the most elu-
sive music in the world
Therefore anything which helps people
everywhere to understand this music is
to be welcomed, for 1t is not easy in any
sense.
Many bird lovers have a really terrible
time trying to get the songs straight
ened out in their own ears and minds.
Ornithologists find difficulty with it,
The early training of these men who
devote their lives to bird study includes
intensive study of the songs and calls
of the various species.
With them, as with the average bird
lover, the subject is a vastly interesting
but difficult one, for there are so many
birds, and so many calls and songs such
varying cfEeps and the like, than even
the earnest student often finds himself
in difficulty.
Those who undertake bird study in a
purely amateur way will be enheartened
by these facts, we believe, and not come
to expect too much of themselves.
They will realize that the best way in
the world to learn the songs and calls
of the various birds with which they
come in contact in city and suburban
gardens is to hear them initiated by
some one who really knows or from a
sound film record.
Books are helpful, but at the best
leave much to be desired in this par
ticular field. A good book may give an
excellent colored picture of a bird, it may
present salient facts as to habits which
will help identify the bird, but often fails
lamentably TO give the songs so that
the layman can know them when he
hears them.
There is nothing quite like the
whistler when it comes to bird calls
New books are coming on the market
from time to time. offering help to bird
students. A few of these recently have
been devoted to new attempts to take
bird calls off the piano keys, where they
do not belong, and put them on paper
in new way, so that they may be rec
ognized when heard by the inexperi-
enced.
One of these books attempted to get
the aid of science and the new sound
this volume left us nonplussed Perhaps
by intensive study one might master it,
but We have our doubts.
Some Of the older books devoted to a
study of bird music are wonderful. in
deed, but all seem to fall down by trying
to make a piano keyboard initiate a
birds throat
The effort is futile, except with very
few birds. There are some birds whose
music has been translated" into piano
music rather successfully but that is
because their voices, in certain moods,
are just little pianolike, just as few
other birds have fiutelike voices.