The connectedness of things

There's another call for papers. It's about animal communication, an issue about which I am rather sceptical... despite my conversations with trees. Yet this theme struck me as offering possibilities.

What are experiences and implications of animal and interspecies communicators regarding communication, relations, knowledge with and amidst nonhuman agents and worlds?

Consider what I was writing about yesterday, with Bobbit and the idea of complexity... more, considering my theory that subsong offers a way for the robin to evolve a sense of his identity.. and further, my claim that he makes other sounds, that are not song, but are clearly communicative - the alarm call, the cheep, the "are you there?" and the whistle...

That reminded me of David George Haskell on chickadees, he says they have more units of sound to play with than human language - English, at any rate - and he has no doubt that they communicate information, specific information. What kind of predator, where, posing how much threat? What kind of food and where? Commands, requests, expressions of feeling.

Of course the prairie dog guy has explored this in detail and argues strongly that animals have language.

Anyway, I had this in the back of my mind this morning when I was out doing the breathing. Bobbit was perched above me, preening and resting. All of a sudden, Mrs Squizzel started up - BARK-BARK-BARK-WAIL, BARK-BARK-BARK-WAIL. I was surprised as she will eat on the green box right next to me, so why was she loud with alarm calls. She was at the top of the cherry tree - out on top of a pollarded branch. This is not her normal position. In fact, I had never seen a squirrel there.

I walked around looking for the cat. Nothing. I tried going away, but she didn't stop screaming.

Finally, I looked up and saw a kite circling above us. When the kite left, Mrs S quieted and came next to me, to the green box, to eat.

I thought, "Did that call communicate 'aerial threat' rather than 'ground threat' to other squirrels?" Monkeys and prairie dogs, meerkats too, I think, and ground squirrels, can do that, so why not Mrs S?

When she left, Bobbit came down to have some suet. Then he flew into the lilac and started making a noise I had never heard from any bird... It was so strange that I wondered if he was choking or his beak was stuck together. He made this noise with his beak shut. It was much lower in frequency than any of his calls. It sounded like he was imitating the squirrel's bark.

I was stunned. Completely stunned.

When I went out again later, Bobbit returned and offered up another new sound. It was a mixture between the "are you there?" call and the first half phrase of a song, but delivered with some aggression. It was followed by him cannoning off across the back fence.

What can't you find fascinating if you spend enough time just observing?