Andrew Skeoch

To understand that these honey eaters are actually, their lives are shaped by their vocalizing, their communicating, is a powerful insight.

As I travel around the country, you hear Spaniards in different populations giving very different songs.

And what I've realized is that each local population has their own song.

And so what they are doing is creating a sonic identity as a form of bonding, of belonging to that local community.

In 2023, I think, I was up in southern Queensland and I had the opportunity to drive down the road to Bourke, which goes through some pretty remote area.

And I'd last been there 20 years ago and I'd recorded a spiny singing there at dawn that just had such a different song.

I didn't even recognize it as a spiny at the time.

Coming back 20 years later, I wanted to go to that same spot and see whether I could hear that same population of honey eaters.

And I couldn't quite find the location.

I ended up camping about 15 kilometers away from where I'd recorded.

I recorded Spine East that morning and they had a similar but noticeably different song.

After I'd finished listening to the dawn chorus, I drove on a bit further.

Ah, I found the spot where I'd been 20 years beforehand.

I did a bit more recording and the Spineys there had exactly the same song that I'd heard 20 years ago.

And so what that told me was that over distances of maybe only a few tens of kilometers, 15 kilometers in this case,

The songs were quite different, or noticeably different, whereas the fidelity of song over decades was maintained by a population.

So the subtlety and sophistication of this dawn singing and the importance of it, I suppose, is reflected in this kind of experience of listening to these birds.

Once you get your ear in for it, it becomes so obvious.

And of course, the reason that they're able to do this is that they're a song learning species.

They're a Passerine songbird.