The other day, as I was slowly coming to my senses after a good night’s sleep, I heard a collared dove cooing outside my window. To keep myself from being lulled back to sleep by its soporific calls, I started counting how many times in succession the bird called “to-doo-doo”.
9 … 7 … 9 … 11 … 9 … Then suddenly – 3. A few minutes later, the long sets of cooing started up again. And again ended abruptly after just three! What was happening? Why such a drastic change in rhythm? Then it hit me: both times, an airplane had passed overhead!
The poor dove had given way to the superior boom of human invention. Unable to hear itself calling for a mate, the bird simply had to keep its mouth shut until the competition passed.
Spanish sparrows are gregarious birds that communicate continually.Raising the pitch
Birds, I found out, are being affected so badly by human noise that there are reduced populations of birds around the noisy places where we live and work.
Some birds have even adapted their song pitch to a frequency higher than the average human sounds, in their efforts to hear each other communicating.
The orchestra of human noise has surrounded us since birth and we are oblivious to the harm it is causing nature – and us
As we go about our din-filled day, we pay little attention to the steady decline of natural sounds. After all, the orchestra of human noise has surrounded us since birth and we are oblivious to the harm it is causing nature – and us.
Higher, constant noise levels are associated with higher levels of stress, less offspring, shorter lifespans, sleeping disorders, nervous dispositions, tinnitus and chronic anxiety.
A robin cocks its head to listen to a rival’s song.Noises trigger “stress response” – a reaction that allows us to escape danger. But this response comes at a price in our chronically noisy society, as the constant release of stress-response hormone builds up in our bodies, affecting our brain and immune functions.
Even as we marginalise birds by out-competing them in the sound department, we shoot ourselves in the foot.
Desirée Falzon is a naturalist and field teacher with BirdLife Malta.
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