Birdsong Radio

I was just stumbling around in the ambient section of iTunes' radio listings, and found a radio station that plays nothing but recorded birdsongs. I think its' pretty wonderful. birdsongradio.com, embedded above.

[#1 posted by apoxia , April 2, 2009 1:06 PM]

I agree; it is wonderful. It could be a nice neutral and non-sing-along-able station to listen to when I need to concentrate on writing an article or my thesis :)

[#2 posted by EeyoreX , April 2, 2009 1:07 PM]

Is this like a beta of Twitter?

[#3 posted by GregLondon , April 2, 2009 1:08 PM]

As an added benefit, I don't think you can copyright recorded birdsong.

[#4 posted by Xeni Jardin , April 2, 2009 1:10 PM]

@greglondon, heh, that's a great point!

[#5 posted by Anonymous , April 2, 2009 1:16 PM]

Thanks for turning me on to this! Delightful!

[#6 posted by w000t , April 2, 2009 1:38 PM]

#3 & #4

I wouldn't be too sure. I was listening to a different stream (link) the other day and one of the birds in a jungle loop was repeating a few notes of a classical tune every few seconds. It could have been apophenia, but it made me think of the old cartographers' trick of inserting innocuous fictitious data in amongst the real to make reproductions identifiable.

[#7 posted by GregLondon , April 2, 2009 1:49 PM]

I think the court case involved a recording of thunder and rain for a "relaxation/meditation" tape or something like that. The courts ruled that no human expression was involved in the recording, so copyright didn't apply.

Even if they inject watermarking, that isn't human expression, so they'd have a bit of an uphill battle to try to claim it is a copyrighted work.

[#8 posted by Anonymous , April 2, 2009 1:53 PM]

On DAB radio in Britain there are 2 (possibly test) channels containing just birdsong. I agree; it is a wonderful sound. It's helped me turn off my thoughts and sleep many a night.

[#9 posted by SednaBoo , April 2, 2009 2:24 PM]

I use stuff like this for my ringtones. It's very distinct and you can hear the high pitches easily in a noisy place, and it's also not manic like most regular ringtones.

[#10 posted by BadStoryDan , April 2, 2009 2:46 PM]

I turned my radio on at about 3AM the other night and they must've been off the air because all it was was bird songs - Rock 101 in Vancouver.

I was more than creeped out by it.

[#11 posted by TharkLord , April 2, 2009 2:47 PM]

Very nice. This could be the next star on our cat's list of hit albums.

(Her current favorite is the "Winged Migration" cd that came with a picture book on the film)

[#12 posted by Anonymous , April 2, 2009 4:47 PM]

I can't find iTunes 'radio listings' anywhere. Where exaclty do you go in iTunes to find this?

[#13 posted by cycle23 , April 2, 2009 7:01 PM]

Some isolated bird songs are not all that great for some, but I find they do not interfere with my own sleep patterns, which are affected negatively by light some nights.

[#14 posted by Muscato , April 3, 2009 12:44 AM]

I started playing this while sitting on my porch; suddenly, birdwise, we have the most popular house in the neighborhood. I suspect that some of these may be unfamiliar songs to our birds (I live on the south-east coast of the Arabian peninsula).

[#15 posted by martinbrook , April 3, 2009 2:17 AM]

I'm pretty sure the 'birdsong as test signal' was first done by Classic FM when they launched in the UK. They were one of the first national commercial stations, and they played birdsong on their FM frequencies for a few weeks before launch. It was, IMHO, a far better radio station during those weeks than it is now :)

[#16 posted by DBinNYC , April 3, 2009 4:52 AM]

I just tuned in via Chumby, and now have a conversation between Chumby and a morning dove at my window.

[#17 posted by Anonymous , April 3, 2009 11:52 AM]

i got 2½ minutes of bird singing, and then it stopped and an announcer came on to tell me to "click on birdsongradio.com" ... then the birds started up again

it was jarring

i hope it doesn't do this very often

[#18 posted by Anonymous , April 3, 2009 12:09 PM]

yep, announcer seems to interrupt every 15 minutes or so

this isn't going to work for me