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Finding Your Way Home
Birds convey important messages if we are attuned to them
© Gregg Thompson
In her book Out of the Woods, Lynn Darling describes an account of way-finding through the thick fog of coastal Greenland. An Inuit hunting party was kayaking close enough to shore to hear breaking waves, but the land was lost in mist. Darling writes: “After hours of steady paddling, the leader of the group suddenly swung (his) kayak toward shore and hit the narrow inlet right on target. The Inuit had been listening to the songs of male Snow Buntings . . . the Inuit recognized the notes of the birds that nested on the headland of their home fjord.”
BirdNote®
Finding Your Way Home
Written by Todd Peterson
This is BirdNote.
[Music + Song of male Snow Bunting http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/138256]
In her book Out of the Woods, writer Lynn Darling describes an account of way- finding through thick fog on the coast of Greenland. An Inuit hunting party was kayaking close enough to shore to hear breaking waves, but the land was lost in mist. How would they find the narrow entrance to the passage that would lead them home?
The Inuit were unconcerned. Darling writes that: “After hours of steady paddling, the leader of the group suddenly swung (his) kayak toward shore and hit the narrow inlet right on target.”
“The Inuit had been listening to the songs of male Snow Buntings that nested along the coast. Each bird sang a slightly different song, and the Inuit recognized the notes of the birds that nested on the headland of their home fjord.” [Song of the male Snow Bunting http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/138256]
Polynesian navigators often carried with them frigatebirds, which they released and followed to land. To traverse the vast distances between tiny islands, the argonauts of the Western Pacific and Polynesia observed with great care the migration of birds.
Birds convey to us important messages if we are attuned to hear them.
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.
Music: ‘Become Ocean’ by John Luther Adams performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
© 2015 Tune In to Nature.org July 2015 Narrator: Michael Stein / Mary McCann
ID #: navigation-01-2015-07-19navigation-01
music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGva1NVWRXk
1/. Out of the Woods, Lynn Darling. Harper Perennial. 2014. P. 76.
