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The BBC have roped in a host of big-name musicians for a forthcoming documentary about birdsong.
Guillemots, Jarvis Cocker, Peter Gabriel and Beth Orton will feature on the 80-minute slot yet to be scheduled by BBC4. Well it was hardly gonna be Skepta, Fiddy Cent or The Game now, was it?
Why Birds Sing is based on the book of the same name penned by musician-cum-philosopher David Rothenberg. The show will reach a restrained yet probably wondeful climax with Gabriel and Guillemots playing over a selection of various birdsongage, including the noises made by woodpeckers, stonechat, the butcher bird and, intriguingly, the hoopoe.
Why intriguingly? Because I'd recently come to the conclusion that this rare, pink-feathered Upupidae was a fabrication of the various bird books I'd read as a nipper. Hence, confirmation of its existence thrills me to the very core.
Sara Ramsden from the film makers Cheetah Productions revealed why we should all watch it:
“Only on BBC4 can you see a man in his underpants pretending to be a song thrush while revealing the latest neuroscientific discovery of what’s really going on in a bird’s brain.”
So that's what they're doing with my licence fee, etc etc...
