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
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ISBN 9781743325834 paperback
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Cover image and internal illustrations by Amy Kersey
(kerseyink.com)
Cover design by Miguel Yamin and Alexandra Guzmán
Internal design by Alexandra Guzmán
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