A sound I had never heard before penetrated my hammock-bound meditation. It was a sort of rattling growl, loud and clearly full of meaning, though not one I could interpret. It was urgent and it was serious: so much was clear. But I couldn’t even tell who was making the sound.

Then I heard it again. Was it a mammal? But though the deer around here – Reeves’s muntjac and Chinese water deer – can make some weird calls, this just wasn’t right. No large predator, either: we ain’t got none round here.

Bird then? Reluctantly admitting the limits of my knowledge I fumbled for my phone, an awkward business in a hammock, and tried Merlin, the birdsong app. But there was no further repetition: the need for such communication was past, or the growler had moved out of range.

Later and off-hammock I heard another sound. It wasn’t very similar to my rattling roar, but unquestionably the same timbre. And I knew it at once: rook. There’s a busy rookery just a 100 yards away: they’re social birds and love a good conversation.

There have been several studies of rook vocalisations but nothing I could find offers a simple vocabulary: this caw means this and that grunt means that. I suspect it might be a rather complex system of communication — not musically complex, like the song of a nightingale, but the calls are many and various and clearly carry important meanings.

The idea of language is very precious to us humans, because it’s seen as a thing – or the thing — that separates us from all other living things. With every discovery about communication in non-human animals the definition of language changes, to maintain the myth of human uniqueness.

But like everything else language is a continuum. Rooks are very intelligent, very social, very committed to the pair-bond and very keen on comms. Without making claims for the growler’s ability to write a rookish version of Ulysses, rooks are clearly talking. And listening. And understanding. Parlez-vous rook?

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/how-to-fly/simon-barnes/9781526687548

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fly-Taking-Insects-Humans/dp/1526687542