Birds in our trees

[matthew hahn <esker@mail.utexas.edu>]

I woke up this scintillatin' morning out of terms with my stomach and
cranium, due to the once happy embrace of last night's shindig.  I grabbed
a grapefruit and went out to our back patio which overlooks trees, and
terraces leading down to a creek (amusingly we own the river bed).  

I sat, started eating and then I noticed the birds were looping.  There
were about four of them doing it.  One bird had a particular blu blu blu
and then there would be a quarter note rest, then other birds came in for
an answering measure, sometimes two.  Then some birds would just come in on
top of the first, but the basic rhythm was maintained. It was strikingly
like a dance and it sounded fantastic(;  

By course, I thought I'd better tape this, so I finished my grapefruit, ran
inside, got my portable tape recorder, and went ran back outside.  They had
stopped. ): On the other side of our property the neighbors had once again
started arguing in loud voices.  This noise I also contemplated taping, but
I don't think they'd be too happy to see me.

Really it was all about the birds.  Has anyone else had this experience to
such a degree where the birds were interacting in this way?  I mean these
birds actually had it down.  I was almost convinced that Dead Can Dance or
Loop Guru was around. (; 

Do birds loop without knowing? Can it be said a human loops as a human's
heart beats?  Or is the heart, moreover, really the mind interpretating
what we desire to hear, the heart just being a direct symbol of pulsing
life?  How does one relate to these physiological/mental needs?  I can see
I'm going to have to get books on bird social structures. (; 

One last question or two, does anybody here know of someone who has done
something completely with birds, animals, samples environmental that was
percussive as these birds were, and last has here anybody used bird calls
and why?  Was it for a particualar mood, for example. 

kick some skillet
  says I makin eggs & 'jacks
     (grapefruit weren't enough (; )
Mjh