What Birds Have To Teach Us About Singing

In a recent Singing to the Trees class I told people to spread out and find a tree to sing to/with for 4 minutes. One participant said that she was intimidated at first because she didn’t know where to begin. It seemed like so much effort to sing. And then she listened to the birds singing. It was like they were saying, “Come on! Just sing! It doesn’t have to be hard.” And that message brought tears to her eyes as she started to sing.

One of the things I love most about birdsong is how natural and effortless it sounds. There is a purity and a freedom in their singing. They just sing their song.

They don’t seem to hold anything back. Definitely not the mockingbird who decides to sing at 2 am outside my window! Rumi said,  “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

I always tell my voice clients, focus on how the sounds make you feel, don’t worry about how it sounds.  Not worrying leads to relaxation which makes singing easier and more fun. 

When I sing with birds, I don’t try and imitate their songs. Their songs are so unique that they inspire me to experiment and find my own unique sounds.  They have a very different singing apparatus called the syrinx with two tubes instead of our one tube(the larynx) So they can make two sounds at once and some can even sing rising and falling notes at the same time. 

I like to listen to birdsong with my eyes closed, receiving the sound like a piece of music. And then singing a little in response, and listening again. A call and response that fills my soul.