The secret songs of birds (and humans)

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers  // That perches in the soul //  And sings the tune without the words  //

And never stops – at all… --- Emily Dickinson

PRESENTING UNDERSTORY: A 3 DAY RETREAT EXPLORING BODY, LAND & WORD THROUGH PRANAYAMA, SLOW YOGA, FOREST BATHING & CREATIVE WRITING.

Spring is slowly lurching forward here in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Mostly a one step forward, two steps back affair this time of year, with crocuses bravely challenging late snow and robins defiantly proclaiming that spring has sprung whilst shivering on a bare tree limb.

Most of us recognise birdsong as something that arrives fully formed; the clear notes an unmistakable harbinger of a new day or season. But, like most things, there are hidden depths, a shadow side… birds sing secret songs as well.

The first is called subsong. Coined as a term in 1936, subsong describes the soft, variable, exploratory vocalizations of young birds in the early stages of learning to sing, or adults outside of breeding season. It bears little resemblance to the full throated gusto we are familiar with. Rather, it is mumbled and wandering with an almost dreamy quality. Instead of a performance, it is something closer to play. Like human infant babbling, it is the sound of a nervous system feeling its way toward something it cannot yet identify.

The second is called whispersong. This song is known by the bird completely, but they choose to sing it very quietly. Whispersong is heard only in intimate proximity; it is their full song but sung privately. A 1914 letter from author J. William Lloyd to Bird-lore magazine described whispersong thusly “The performance was like that of a bird in a reverie — like the ghost of a thought of a song. His throat merely trembled, and occasionally the bill parted just a trifle. Yet his song seemed the full repertoire of the Catbird.”  And it’s interesting to note that an adult bird with a fully crystallised song can still produce subsong-like vocalizations outside breeding season - instead of a linear progression, it's a cyclical reinforcement of creative expression and enjoyment.

Two subtle songs. One amorphous, experimental. The other, fully realised but hushed.

I find myself wondering if humans have secret songs and if so, how we might hear them.

Consider what these secret songs actually provide our bird-friends. They have no audience. No territory being defended, no mate being courted.

Their subsong is vague, almost hypothetical, oftentimes bearing no resemblance to what it will eventually become. And yet it is necessary. Birds that are prevented from hearing their own subsong (ie: deafened before the sensorimotor phase of development) go on to produce anomalous songs as adults. The dreaminess, the disorder, the not-yet-knowing: these are not obstacles to finding the song - it is the process.

We are not so different.

There is a flavour of attention that productivity culture rarely rewards: a curious hunch, the subtle sensation, undefinable creative impulses. We tend to skip past these states, reaching instead for the crystallized, the legible, the ready-to-perform. But something is lost when we do. The subsong is the liminal space in which things begin. To sing your subsong is to breathe life into spaciousness; trusting that the nascent is not empty, it's generative.

The whispersong is something entirely different.

This isn't the sound of a bird finding its voice. This is a bird that knows their song fully and essentially hums it to themself. Scientists are not entirely sure why birds whispersing. It arises in intimate, relaxed moments, effectively functioning as a calming lullaby.

The whispersong is nourishing. It is the private joy of expression for its own sake.

To whispersing is to remember that there is a world outside of strategy and productivity - that some songs exist simply because singing them feels good.

Our secret songs take both forms. There is the subsong: fluttering, freewheeling inspiration. And there is the whispersong: sung quietly for our own comfort, asking nothing of anyone.

To hear either song requires a different kind of listening. Not with the ears alone, but by inviting the whole body to become a receiving instrument, sensing and feeling rather than thinking and reasoning. My collaborator Nica Celly speaks of widening the sensorial aperture: expanding our rigid and tamed definition of sensation to receive what is actually being transmitted.

In fact, Professor Charles Spence of Oxford's Crossmodal Research Laboratory estimates that humans possess between 22 and 33 senses (far eclipsing Aristotle's tidy five) and ecopsychologist Dr. Michael K Cohen expands that to a whopping 50+. We are not unusual in this; animals have always navigated the world through sensory systems that exceed simple taxonomy. Sharks sense electromagnetic fields via tiny, jelly-filled pores concentrated around the snout, head, and lower jaw. Birds navigate using Earth's magnetic field through a sophisticated "magnetic compass" in their eyes and a "map" system involving magnetite in their beaks. Elephants hear through their feet. What we are reclaiming, perhaps, is not something exotic, but something creaturely. We are animals, after all. These sensory capacities are innate, gradually narrowed by a Western, industrialised culture more comfortable with the quantifiable, than the wild and fluid nature of, well, nature!

Perhaps some of these “expanded senses” spark a sense-memory within you, a key that unlocks your ability to hear your personal secret song. Some of them you may have heard of: proprioception, our awareness of the body position in space; interoception, the perception of stimuli originating inside the body, from heartbeat to breath to the grip of tension in the shoulders; equilibrioception, our sense of balance. And some you may not, though you have most certainly felt them. The sense of play, humor and pleasure. Our relationship with and to the passing sense of time. The language and articulation sense, used to express feeling and convey information in every medium from the bees' dance to human literature.  The sense of wonder and awe. Honestly, even this list is a kind of taming - the naming of what is ultimately wilder and more fluid than any catalogue can hold.

Recognising and nurturing these capacities has a real impact on how we live.  Attunement to our body's pre-verbal signals tends to support emotional awareness, clearer decision making, and aids our ability to navigate stress. Unstructured play and exploratory wandering are consistently associated with creative insight. And perhaps most significantly: widening the sensorial aperture doesn't just turn us toward ourselves. It expands our capacity to receive the world around us… other people, the land, the More Than Human world we are always, already, in relationship with.

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With Understory, Nica, me & all of our attendees will co-create conditions in which subsongs can wander freely and whispersongs can be distinctly heard. 

A richer, more layered experience of being alive becomes possible when we slow down enough to listen with the whole of our bodies. Over three days (August 21-23) we will explore the Understory in Cazadero, CA.  Moving through encounters with word, body and land, we will expand our perception from micro to macro, breath to landscape, individual to collective.

Join us, your secret songs await.  Learn more and reserve your space here.