Photo: Chestnut-sided Warbler – © Bev Wigney
Here’s a fascinating essay entitled “Shifting Soundscapes” by Natalie Middleton, on Orion Magazine for their “Bird Week” feature. The essay speaks of the phenomenon of shifting baseline syndrome. It’s a thing. As the environment changes, so does our perception of what constitutes normal. With enough passage of time, we come to believe that what we are seeing and hearing is about how things have always been, especially as one generation of observers fades away into the next. I particularly liked this passage from the essay – speaking of how the richness of birdsong has diminished but is going largely unnoticed due to shifting baseline syndrome.
“This “environmental generational amnesia” means each following generation unknowingly absorbs a diminished “new normal” in birdsong: We can’t perceive how much things have changed around us, and—more importantly—what might even be possible to restore.”
This essay also includes 3 brief but FASCINATING SOUND RECORDINGS. You can read the essay for more info on how these were made, but in essence, these are a sampling of reconstructed birdsong soundscapes that were made by an international team of avian researchers, for many locations using bird census data from North America and Europe. Each begins with a chorus representative of 1998 and ends with a chorus representative of 2018. The results are quite sobering.
Anyhow, it’s an essay that is well worth a read. I believe that it is not behind a paywall, so should be accessible to all. Here’s a link.
Link to the “Shifting Soundscapes” essay on Orion Magazine for its Bird Week feature.