BIRD SONG AT EVENTIDE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 20

BIRD SONG AT EVENTIDE

Tut Records for Radio New Zealand

ing, the Mobile Unit of the NZBS, with technicians, and Dr. R. A. Falla (Director of: the Dominion Museum) as adviser set out for a private garden at Day’s Bay, Wellington. The object was to catch the notes of some birds whose lodgings alternated between a flowering red gum and a birch tree. A microphone was placed strategically; the notes came, and so did the wnhirr in the branches of a sudden breeze, drowning out the song. On a calmer morning, two days later, the stage was set again. A telescopic microphone was _ projected into the branches of the red gum and a second microphone was hauled up into the birch. Results were slightly better, though fewer birds attended the session. Bird-recording, as the BBC people found when they used a ’cello to charm some response from an elusive nightingale, takes patience. After an hour’s wait, a bird began to sing. But a straying tomcat began to sing simultaneously and the microphones, which are exceedingly sensitive, recorded him perfectly. Then came another burst of song and a group of children (it was during the extended school holidays) chose that moment to be vociferous. And they too went on record, along with a’ whistle, from a railway engine across the harbour. All Over in 15 Seconds ._ Two more hours of silence passed (what the technicians may have said was not, of course, recorded at all), then a bird flew into the gum, perched right over the microphone and began his song -to the staccato accompaniment of a fox terrier. Luckily the dog stopped, and the bird performed solo for about 15 seconds, at the end of which a’ woman on a recent fine morn-

drove up in a car and called an enthusiastic greeting to a friend. The technicians made frantic hushing signs, but they found, when once more back at the studio that they had caught during the uninterrupted 15 seconds just what they wanted. The bird was a tui, and its call is now the identification signal of Radio New Zealand, the new shortwave station of the NZBS, which opened on September 27. The signal, which is played for about two minutes before transmission starts, will no doubt soon come to be recognised as a distinctive call from New Zealand. Every shortwave service has its special type of signal. Radio Australia uses a music-box version of part of the famous song Waltzing Matilda, and the CBC International Service the first few notes of Canada’s national song. Besidgs possessing musical intervals which in pitch and rhythm suit the purpose very well, the tui, as a bird indigenous to New. Zealand is an unustial but an apt choice for introducing overseas listeners to New Zealand shortwave broadcasting.