ISSN 1758-6488
|
From 'Edgelands' Non-fiction |
print view |
The spring of 2010, and the first signs that iPhone birdsong apps are being abused, as people begin to play the pre-recorded warblings and alarm calls of various confused species back into the trees and bushes. We see the first occurrences of a new kind of edgelands flash mob: at first light, hundreds gather in the silent places outside of towns and cities, lit by the firefly glow of their phone screens, and at the preordained exact moment play the songs of their chosen birds, a digital dawn chorus made possible by lightweight flashmemory technology.
Later in the day, starlings begin to assemble in long minatory Hitchcockian strings along the mast’s cables. As evening approaches, they take to the air as one and gather into the swarming shapes familiar from our city centres and beer commercials, heading north towards the huge winter flock that forms near the Lune. Maybe because they form such huge murmurations, starlings are more broadly local, learning each other’s calls and exchanging information in the vast shoalings we see at dusk. According to meteorologists, there are three types of twilight: civil twilight, once the sun has sunk six degrees below the horizon; nautical twilight, when the sun is twelve degrees deep and the horizon is difficult to discern; and astronomical twilight, once the sky has turned completely dark. But there is also starling twilight, that uncanny borderline moment when the birds’ collective mind decides it is time to fall into its night-time roost, and the great display comes to its sudden and mysterious end.
