Hear the Sound Of Endangered Birds Get Turned Into Electronic Music

Bird-watch­ing is hav­ing a moment, thanks to the pan­dem­ic.

As non-essen­tial work­ers adjust­ed to spend­ing more time at home, their ears adjust­ed to the increas­ing­ly non-for­eign sound of bird­song out­side their win­dows.

Those sweet tweets are no doubt large­ly respon­si­ble for the record break­ing turnout at this year’s Glob­al Big Day, the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s annu­al bird­ing event, held ear­li­er this spring.

50,000 par­tic­i­pants logged 2.1 mil­lion indi­vid­ual obser­va­tions, and 6,479 species.

Appar­ent­ly, there are even more birds in this world than there are sour­dough starters…

…though for the imme­di­ate future, civic-mind­ed bird­watch­ers will be con­fin­ing their obser­va­tions to the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty, as a mat­ter of pub­lic health.

We look for­ward to the day when bird enthu­si­asts resid­ing out­side of Belize, Mex­i­co, or Guatemala can again trav­el to the Yucatán Penin­su­la in hopes of a face-to-face encounter with the Black Cat Bird.

Til then, the ani­mat­ed video above, in which a Black Cat­bird unwit­ting­ly duets with Belize’s Gar­i­fu­na Col­lec­tive, makes a sooth­ing place hold­er.

The cat­bird and the col­lec­tive appear along with nine oth­er elec­tron­ic musi­cian / endan­gered native bird teams on the fundrais­ing album, A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean.

A Black-cheeked Ant-Tan­ag­er joins NILLO, a pro­duc­er and DJ from Cos­ta Rica who draws musi­cal inspi­ra­tion from the trib­al com­mu­ni­ties around him.

Siete Catorce, a pro­duc­er who helped pop­u­lar­ize the pop­u­lar bor­der genre known as rui­dosón—a mix of cumbia and pre­his­pan­ic trib­al sounds—is paired with a Yel­low-head­ed Par­rot.

Jor­dan “Time Cow” Chung of Equiknoxx seam­less­ly inte­grates a Jamaican Black­bird into his unique brand of organ­ic, exper­i­men­tal dance­hall.

The album fol­lows 2015’s Guide to the Bird­song of South Amer­i­ca, and as with its pre­de­ces­sor, 100% of the prof­its will be donat­ed to region­al orga­ni­za­tions focused on birds and con­ser­va­tion—Birds Caribbean, La Aso­ciación Orni­tológ­i­ca de Cos­ta Rica, and Mexico’s Fun­da­cion TXORI.

Birds, as the project’s founder, Robin Perkins, told Gizmodo’s Earth­er, are the most musi­cal ani­mals in the world:

There’s some­thing real­ly nice about focus­ing on endan­gered species and songs that are dis­ap­pear­ing and not being pre­served and to use music to raise aware­ness about the species. I believe music has a big pow­er for social activism and social change and for envi­ron­men­tal change.

Lis­ten to A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Buy the album or indi­vid­ual tracks on Band­camp to ben­e­fit the char­i­ties above.

Robin Perkins’ lim­it­ed edi­tion prints of the fea­tured birds also ben­e­fit the bird-focused region­al char­i­ties and can be pur­chased here.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.