Ken Shiovitz has been a professional student of animal behavior and bird song, and had previously worked in public health, surgical nursing, teaching, and consulting. For the past 16 years he has been an Associate Broker with Windermere Real Estate in Seattle. Ken's writing on birds has appeared in such journals as Animal Behaviour, Behaviour & Natural History. His poems have appeared in the Kota Press Poetry Journal, PoetsWest & the Washington Voices Project. |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott |
Bird Song by Ken Shiovitz In these times of threats to personal and national security, of permeable borders, of the struggle between freedoms and the need for order, one's thoughts turn naturally to.................bird song. There is much we can learn from living systems regarding security and survival. I wish to address two main strategies for maintenance of culturally transmitted bird song. These are use of: 1)strong boundaries 2)enforcement (detailed learning) within a boundary The importance of boundaries in biological systems is exemplified by the membrane of individual cells, and at the societal level, by dialects in songs of birds. Membranes of cells can be very complex, permitting selective entry of outside entities. Even more interesting is the use of pockets and channels by convolutions of the membrane to permit useful entry deep into a cell, while still keeping the entity outside of the membrane, maintaining security, as it were. At the societal level, one can learn much from the songs of birds about the balance between order and freedom. Faced with improvisation and mistakes, any communication system would rapidly turn into, at best, a Tower of Babel condition, or break down into a mess of utterly dysfunctional sounds. Bird species have evolved at least two strategies to combat such entropic forces. The first, illustrated by the white crowned sparrow, uses boundaries within boundaries, to maintain dialects. Changes within a dialect boundary, can presumably be learned more easily and rapidly, by more direct exposure to the change. (It is highly possible that changes by more successful breeders are copied more often, either through genetic or learned mechanisms, which make for some interesting studies). I am suggesting here, that the stronger the boundary, and the smaller the bounded area, the more is freedom permissible within the bounded area. This tradeoff of freedom and boundary is further illustrated by comparing to dialect species, the song system of the indigo buntings. Rather than small dialect areas, these bunting have a range that exceeds most of the eastern half of the United States. Recordings from different States, such as Michigan, New York, and Kentucky show a wide sharing of syllables (sound spectrographed identifiable types within the recorded songs). How do the buntings accomplish such uniformity of communication system? It appears that they are very precise learners of the fine details. They have given up some freedom for acceptance of mistakes, as a tradeoff for uniformity. This may sound abhorrent to the American ideal for freedom, but may be the very formula for the American/World ideal for an international understanding and peace, facilitated by a worldwide communication system. In summary, I am pointing out the value of boundaries, and boundaries within boundaries, emphasizing that these boundaries need to be strong, and that we can maximize our freedoms, but give up some of what Americans have traditionally claimed as liberties, in order to extend the remaining strengths of our nation to benefit the rest of the world. c2001Ken Shiovitz |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott |
Ken Shiovitz has been a professional student of animal behavior and bird song, and had previously worked in public health, surgical nursing, teaching, and consulting. For the past 16 years he has been an Associate Broker with Windermere Real Estate in Seattle. Ken's writing on birds has appeared in such journals as Animal Behaviour, Behaviour & Natural History. His poems have appeared in the Kota Press Poetry Journal, PoetsWest & the Washington Voices Project. |
