what a wacky bird

Once upon a time, birds lived in trees and flew around socializing and taking care of business.  Then came MAN with huge microphones and bug spray to camp out and wait...wait for evening to fall and the magic to begin.  One could look at these nature documentarians as the most rarified subset of information seeking academics, or conversely the foot soldiers of the avant garde.  Bird calls have inspired musicians from the time of the Enlightenment  through Olivier Messiaen.  Paul Panhuysen managed to marshall a band made up of canaries and set to work creating melody though their vocal chords.
     But today we gather to praise the covers of these aural oddities, to let the feathers do the talking, so to speak.  I've got a polite obsession with old albums of bird sounds from around the globe, and here are a few.

Comments

[brad ford]

The cover on the top-right must be in Keith Fullerton Whitman's collection!

[illlich]

Symphony of the Birds???

I thought that was the tape-collage music concrete piece by Jim Fassett? Is this version by Frisch similar, or just another of the millions of live bird recordings?

[Webhamster Henry]

Trouble:

I have a Bird album of birds mentioned in Shakespeare, accompanied by the appropriate passages!

[Dale Hazelton]

I like the top left cover, especially how the little birdies feet make musical notes....

[jonp72]

Mickey McGowan, who was the first guy interviewed for Incredibly Strange Music, Vol. 1, is a huge bird music fan. I think he was responsible for getting the guy who ran the BasicHip website into that stuff.

[lorac]

Here is my bird lp: http://flickr.com/photos/gables/491633953/
60 of the most common birds of the Eastern United States LP - comes with an illustrated booklet. Dover records - 1967

[Ivy]

Some time ago I found a page featuring dozens of great records starring singing birds: /www.whistlingrecords.com/birds_and_training/birds_and_training.htm
Alas, the site is under construction now.

[worm trainer]

thanks...but how about posting some bird sing-sing from the recordings!

[Ivy]

I would love to hear some birds ongs as well. It's a shame that the whistling records site is down at the moment because it had some great stuff: the Parker canaries singing along with waltzes, Radio Warblers, Hartz Mountain training records, and awesome mixtures of bird song and music from around the world.

[trouble]

Part of my weekly, thursday morning show here on wfmu is bird calls. My sound bed at mic breaks includes bird calls from all over the globe, many from the albums pictured. Tune in and enjoy.

[Ivy]

Thanks! There's a digital radio station here in the UK that plays nothing but a loop of a 20 minute long recording of bird calls.

[Dan B]

Hey Trouble, nice collection! I also have that Birds on a May Morning album -- it's very beautifully packaged. It's listed as Droll Yankee Records #14 -- I've always wondered what's on the *other* 13 (or more!) DY records...

[Will MacKinnon]

Droll Yankess no.1 through no.13 feature the sounds of old New England. Primarily slightly off color stories on the Bert and I vein. I am desperatly searching these albums, having only one badly scratched version of Swearing in the Bushes, which was one of my fathers favoraite albums. Any help out there???