The Flight of Birds

by Joshua Lobb

  Marion Sinclair’s statement that ‘Kookaburra’ is ‘not composed by me’ is from P.A. Howell’s ‘Sinclair, Marion (1896–1988)’ (2012).

  A summary of the judgement from the appeal case EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited v Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Limited (2011) FCAFC 47 can be found at https://bit.ly/2PFGuHJ.

  The story about the kookaburra and the lyrebird can be found in ‘Aboriginal Legends: The Kookaburra’, published in the Argus in 1952.

  The statement made by the managing director of Larrikin Music is from Justice Edelman’s presentation at the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand Inc. (see above).

  The study of mimicry as ‘parasitic deception’ is from Anastasia Dalziell, Justin Welbergen, Branislav Igic and Robert Magrath’s ‘Avian Vocal Mimicry: A Unified Conceptual Framework’ (2015).

  The notion of ‘the commons’ comes from Jonathan Lethem’s ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’ (2007).

  The discussion of kookaburra ‘joint songs’ comes from Myron C. Baker’s ‘The Chorus Song of Cooperatively Breeding Laughing Kookaburras (Coraciiformes, Halcyonidae: Dacelo Novaeguineae): Characterization and Comparison Among Groups’ (2004).

  The concept of ‘warblish’ comes from Hannah Sarvasy’s ‘Warblish: Verbal Mimicry of Birdsong’ (2016). The warblish phrases I used are from Sarvasy’s text (including Shit a Brick!) and also taken from Abby P. Churchill’s Birds in Literature (1911).

  The Australian Law Reform Commission report Copyright and the Digital Economy is reprinted by permission ALRC.

  Sandra Day O’Connor is cited by Jonathan Lethem (see above).

  Lydia Goehr, Jim Samson and Jonathan Lethem are cited in Chris May’s ‘Jurisprudence V Musicology: Riffs from the Land Down Under’ (2017).

  The notion of ‘entrainment to rhythms’ is from Jonathan I. Benichov, Eitan Globerson and Ofer Tchernichovski’s ‘Finding the Beat: From Socially Coordinated Vocalizations in Songbirds to Rhythmic Entrainment in Humans’ (2016).

  Greg Ham’s statement is quoted in ‘Flute Riff Left a Sour Note for Ham’ (2012).

  Further to Fly

  The title for the story is borrowed from Paul Simon’s song ‘Further to Fly’ from his album The Rhythm of the Saints. The epigraph is from Euripides’ Phoenissae (lines 1515–1525), translated by E.P. Coleridge.

  A version of the story appeared in Southerly in 2017. Thanks to Melissa Boyde for championing my work, and also Elizabeth McMahon and Michelle Hamadache.

  Apologies to Sarah Miller and my father for stealing their cars and using them in the story.

  The Pecking Order

  The epigraph for the story is from Carol J. Adams’ ‘The War on Compassion’ (2014).

  As discussed in my field notes, I am also indebted to the work of Ralph Acampora, Carol J. Adams, Karen Davis, Philip Armstrong, Hayley Singer and especially Annie Potts for their engagement with the lives and deaths of chickens and other nonhuman animals.

  For the depiction of chickens’ behaviour (especially ‘tidbitting’), I have drawn upon Carolynn L. Smith’s ‘Referential Signalling in Birds: The Past, Present and Future’ (2017).

  Nocturne

  The epigraph is from John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (Act I, Scene i, 30).

  The lines from the poet belong to Mark Tredinnick’s ‘Days in the Plateau’ (2007). His story of the tawny frogmouth also made its way into his extraordinary The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir (2009). Reprinted by kind permission from the author.

  Again, I quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, John Keats’ ‘Bright Star’ and T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. The last poem is reprinted by permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.

  I was introduced to the story of the bird of sorrow through Ignácz Kúnos’s Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales (1913). I have adapted the story to serve my purposes.

  Thanks to Olena Cullen for giving me her office and showing me the birds outside the window. These tawny frogmouths have saved my life on a number of occasions.

  Magpies

  The epigraph for the story is from Gisela Kaplan’s Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird (2004). Reprinted by kind permission from the author.

  I’ve taken the majority of the information about magpies from Kaplan’s book and I’ve given Peter a few of her key phrases. Thanks to Gisela Kaplan for her observations on and insights into the story.

  Thanks to Diana Jarman for telling me that magpies are ‘much maligned’ creatures.

  And No Birds Sing

  The title of the story is from John Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame San Merci’. The epigraph is from ‘The Annunciation’ by W.S. Merwin, collected in The First Four Books of Poems. Copyright © 1975 W.S. Merwin, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

  As discussed in my field notes, I acknowledge the work of Rick De Vos, Ursula K. Heise, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Thom van Dooren for enriching this story.

  There is no definitive list of extinct birds, but I am grateful to the following sources:

  Avibase: The World Bird Database: https://bit.ly/2CQCmlk

  The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: www.iucnredlist.org

  Ornithology: The Science of Birds: https://bit.ly/2PFGNCn

  Any errors in the list are my own.

  Virginia Woolf’s suicide note can be found in her obituary in the New York Times (3 April 1941) and at: https://nyti.ms/1lLVvWY.

  I quote two lines from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Reprinted by permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.

  I am grateful to Richard, who drove me to Concord Hospital.

  Aves Admittant

  The epigraph is from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972).

  Thanks to Jo Stirling for introducing me to the Gould’s petrel and telling me stories about her trip to Cabbage Tree Island. Many thanks to Nicholas Carlile, island ecologist, from the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, for his immense generosity in sharing his research and ideas with me. The supervisor in the story is definitely not Nicholas, but I have given many of Nicholas’s stories to the character. Any mistranslations are my own. Special thanks for inviting me to Cabbage Tree Island: I have rearranged some places on the island, invented a few spaces and simplified a few of the practicalities. Thanks to the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, for funding my study leave.

  The story was shaped by Nicholas’s research on the Gould’s petrel, especially:

  Nicholas Carlile, David Priddel, Francis Zino, Cathleen Natividad and David Wingate’s ‘A Review of Four Successful Recovery Programmes for Threatened Sub-Tropical Petrels’ (2003).

  David Priddel, Nicholas Carlile and Robert Wheeler’s ‘Establishment of a New Breeding Colony of Gould’s Petrel (pterodroma leucoptera leucoptera) through the Creation of Artificial Nesting Habitat and the Translocation of Nestlings’ (2006).

  David Priddel and Nicholas Carlile’s ‘Key Elements in Achieving a Successful Recovery Programme: a Discussion Illustrated by the Gould’s Petrel Case Study’ (2009).

  David Priddel, Nicholas Carlile, Dean Portelli, Yuna Kim, Lisa O’Neill, Vincent Bretagnolle, Lisa Ballance, Richard Phillips, Robert Pitman and Matt Rayner’s ‘Pelagic Distribution of Gould’s Petrel (Pterodroma leucoptera): Linking Shipboard and Onshore Observations with Remote-Tracking Data’ (2014).

  The Flight of Birds

  The epigraph is from the song ‘It Never Was You’ from the musical Knickerbocker Holiday, music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson.

  I came across the original tale in Katharine Briggs’ British Folk-Tales and Legends (1977).

  As with the other fairy tales, I have adapted it to serve the young man’s circumstances—but Briggs’ ending is as ambiguous as mine.

  Thanks to Su, for linking my vision to art history: in particular for directing me towards Merleau-Ponty.

  A version of the story appeared in Animal Studies Journal in 2014. Thanks,
again, to Melissa Boyde for her swift and overwhelmingly kind response to the story. Thanks also to Cathy Cole for suggesting I submit the story.

  Thanks to Amy for buying crusty bread the night when I came home on the bus.

  About the author

  Joshua Lobb teaches creative writing and literary studies at the University of Wollongong. His award-winning stories have appeared in The Bridport Anthology, Best Australian Stories, Animal Studies Journal, Text and Southerly.

  Copyright

  This is version 1.0

  First published by Sydney University Press

  © Joshua Lobb 2019

  © Sydney University Press 2019

  Reproduction and communication for other purposes

  Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below:

  Sydney University Press

  Fisher Library F03

  University of Sydney NSW 2006

  AUSTRALIA

  sup.info@sydney.edu.au

  sydney.edu.au/sup

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the National Library of Australia

  ISBN 9781743325834 paperback

  ISBN 9781743325926 epub

  ISBN 9781743322659 mobi

  Cover image and internal illustrations by Amy Kersey

  (kerseyink.com)

  Cover design by Miguel Yamin and Alexandra Guzmán

  Internal design by Alexandra Guzmán

  Works Cited

  Aboriginal Legends: The Kookaburra (1952). The Argus, 3 October. https://bit.ly/2yp238T.

  Acampora, Ralph (2016). [Provocations from the field] Epistemology of Ignorance and Human Privilege. Animal Studies Journal 5 (2): 1–20.

  Adams, Carol J. (2014). The War on Compassion. In John Sorenson, ed. Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable, 18–29. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.

  Adams, Carol J. (2010). The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York and London: Continuum.

  Adams, Carol J. (2006). ‘A very rare and difficult thing’: Ecofeminism, Attention to Animal Suffering and the Disappearance of the Subject. In Waldau, Paul and Kimberley Patton A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics. 591–604. New York: Columbia University Press.

  Aisher, Alex and Vinita Damodaran (2016). Introduction: Human-Nature Interactions Through a Multispecies Lens. Conservation and Society 14 (4) October–December: 293–304.

  Alcoff, Linda Martín (2007). Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types. In Sullivan, Shannon and Nancy Tuana, eds. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. 39–58. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  Alcoff, Linda Martín (1991–1992). The Problem of Speaking for Others. Cultural Critique 20 Winter: 5–32.

  Aloi, Giovanni and Rod Bennison (2011). Sue Coe: I Am an Animal Rights Activist Artist (interview). Antennae 19 Winter: 106–109.

  Anker, Elizabeth Susan (2011). Elizabeth Costello, Embodiment, and the Limits of Rights. New Literary History 42 (1) Winter: 169–192.

  Archer, T.A. (1889). The Crusade of Richard I, 1189–92. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

  Armstrong, Philip (2008). What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity. Abingdon: Routledge.

  Armstrong, Philip and Laurence Simmons (2007). Bestiary: An Introduction. In Simmons, Laurence and Philip Armstrong, eds. Knowing Animals. 1–24. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Arnold, Matthew (1945 [1882]). The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Australian Law Reform Commission (2014, Feb). Copyright and the Digital Economy: Summary Report. https://bit.ly/2pXsUEr

  Baker, Myron C. (2004). The Chorus Song of Cooperatively Breeding Laughing Kookaburras (Coraciiformes, Halcyonidae: Dacelo Novaeguineae): Characterization and Comparison Among Groups. Ethology 110: 21–35.

  Beck, John (2014). The Call of the Anthropocene Cultural Politics 10 (3): 404–414.

  Benichov, Jonathan I., Eitan Globerson and Ofer Tchernichovski (2016). Finding the Beat: From Socially Coordinated Vocalizations in Songbirds to Rhythmic Entertainment in Humans. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (255) June: 1–7.

  Berger, John (2009 [1977]). Why Look at Animals? London: Penguin.

  Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin.

  Blake, William (1961 [1820]). Jerusalem. In The Poetical Works of William Blake, 380.

  Boyde, Melissa (2013). Mining Animal Death for All It’s Worth. In Johnston, Jay and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, eds. Animal Death, 119–136. Sydney: Sydney University Press.

  Briggs, Katharine (2002). British Folk-Tales and Legends: A Sampler. London: Routledge Classics.

  Brower, Matthew (2013). The Bird Effect (Interview with Ceri Levy). Antennae. 27 Winter: 52–61.

  Caballero, Fernán (2002). The Bird of Truth. Marvels and Tales 16 (1): 73–83.

  Caballero, Krista and Frank Ekeberg (2014). Birding the Future. Leonardo 47 (5): 498–499.

  Caracciolo, Marco (2014). ‘Three Smells Exist in this World’: Literary Fiction and Animal Phenomenology in Italo Svevo’s ‘Argo and His Master’ MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 60 (3): 484–505.

  Carlile, Nicholas, David Priddel, Francis Zino, Cathleen Natividad and David B. Wingate (2003). A Review of Four Successful Recovery Programmes for Threatened Sub-Tropical Petrels. Marine Ornithology 31: 185–192.

  Cholakian, Rouben C. (1992). The (Un)naming Process in Villon’s Grand Testament. The French Review 66 (2): 216–228.

  Churchill, Abby P. (1911). Birds in Literature. Worcester, MA: The David Press.

  Coetzee, J.M. (2016 [1999]). The Lives of Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Edited and with an introduction by Amy Gutmann.

  Coetzee, J.M. (2010 [1999]). Disgrace. London: Vintage Classic.

  Copeland, Julie (2005). Elizabeth Grosz: The Creative Impulse (Interview). Sunday Morning 14 August. https://ab.co/2QVEo6M

  Dalziell, Anastasia H., Justin A. Welbergen, Branislav Igic and Robert D. Magrath (2015). Avian Vocal Mimicry: A Unified Conceptual Framework. Biological Reviews 90: 643–668.

  Davis, Karen (2014). Anthropomorphic Visions of Chickens Bred for Human Consumption. In John Sorenson, ed. Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable, 169–185. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

  De Vos, Rick (2017). Provocations from the Field—Extinction, Encountering and the Exigencies of Forgetting. Animal Studies Journal 6 (1): 1–11.

  Derrida, Jacques (2002). The Animal that Therefore I Am (More to Follow). David Wills, trans. Critical Inquiry 28 (2) Winter: 369–418.

  Diamond, Cora (2008). The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy. In Cavell, Stanley, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking and Cary Wolfe Philosophy and Animal Life. 43–90. New York: Columbia University Press.

  Edelman, James (2016). The Nature and Function of Intellectual Property: Lessons from Down Under. Federal Court of Australia, 19 October. https://bit.ly/2Ouhk2d.

  Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw (2001). Participant Observation and Fieldnotes. In Atkinson, Paul, Amanda Coffey, Sarah Delamont, John Lofland and Lyn Lofland, ed. Handbook of Ethnography, 352–368. London: Sage Publications.

  Flavell, Helen (2004). Writing-Between: Australian and Canadian Ficto-criticism. PhD thesis. Murdoch University, Perth, WA.

  Flute Riff Left a Sour Note for Ham (2012). Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April. https://bit.ly/2yL4B0l.

  Franklin, Adrian (2007). Relating to Birds in Postcolonial Australia. Kunapipi 29 (2): 102–125.

  Gibbs, Anna (2003). Writing and the Flesh of Others. Australian Feminist Studies 18 (42): 309–319.

  Goldsmith, Oliver (1825). A History of the Earth and Animated Nature. Philadelphia: Grigg and Elliot.
<
br />   Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (2007). The Complete Fairy Tales. Jack Zipes, ed. London: Vintage.

  Grosz, Elizabeth (2011). Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

  Grosz, Elizabeth (2008). Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press.

  Haas, Gerrit (2017). Ficto/critical Strategies: Subverting Textual Practices of Meaning, Other, and Self-Formation. Bielefeld: Transcript.

  Haraway, Donna (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

  Heaney, Seamus (1992). St Kevin and the Blackbird. In The Spirit Level, 20–21. London: Faber and Faber.

  Heise, Ursula K. (2016). Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

  Herman, David (2014). Animal Worlds in Modern Fiction: An Introduction. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 60 (3) Fall: 421–443.

  Hinchliffe, Steve (2010). Where Species Meet. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (1): 34–35.

  Howell, P.A. (2012). Sinclaire, Marion (1896–1988). Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sinclair-marion-15924

  Kaplan, Gisela (2004). Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird. Clayton: CSIRO Publishing.

  King, Sigrid (1990). Naming and Power in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Black American Literature Forum 24 (4) Winter: 683–696.

  Kúnos, Ignácz (1913). Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales. London: George C. Harrap and Co.

  Lambert, Shaena (2001). Kublai Khan and the Sun Bird: A Fairy Tale. Marvels and Tales 15 (2): 224–228.