Michel Leboeuf hears less and less well, having spent his life distinguishing the songs of birds in the woods. So as not to forget anything about this aerial concert, he noted the “honk-a-honk” of the geese, the “hooî-îîîîîîî” of the buzzard, and even the whirring of the wings of the female mosquitoes, which attract the males.
This gives The lost songs of nature. Welcome to Anthropophony, his latest essay which appears at MultiMondes. Michel Leboeuf is a biologist. Now semi-retired, he surveyed the Lanaudière woods for years for the Lanaudière Ecosystem Conservation Trust and also edited the magazine Wild nature for ten years.
A specialist in birds, he has long let himself be guided by sound to identify the different species that inhabit our forests. For him, as soon as we cross the edge of a wood, hearing takes precedence over sight. “It seems like we rekindle our sense of hearing when we go into nature. As we cannot see very far or very well in the forest, hearing means that we are able to perceive what is around us,” he says. The morning of our interview, he heard the footsteps of a large invisible beast, a moose or a white-tailed deer, through the sound of branches cracking under its weight. “I knew she was there,” he said.
“The human being is above all a visual organism,” notes the biologist Raphaël Proulx, in his preface to the work. Our visual acuity is one of the most developed in the animal world, behind a handful of predatory birds. However, it is communication through sound that has allowed us to transmit our knowledge, to store it in our cultural knowledge by word of mouth. This knowledge was passed down orally from generation to generation. Modern humans are a decidedly vocal organism. »
For Michel Leboeuf, it is writing that has given priority to sight in humans, to the detriment of hearing. “Since then, vision has reigned supreme over our sensory environment, and this domination increased with the Age of Enlightenment, a turning point that celebrated the control of science and technology over society. In the past, transmission was carried out on paper; now it’s on digital media. Only traditional societies have retained oral transmission as a mode of diffusion,” he writes.
It is therefore an unusual sensory experience that the scientist invites us to experience. To follow him, you must first find a forest, then close your eyes and listen.
The oldest of all sounds, those of natural phenomena, which he calls “geophony”, are those of “thunder, rain, sleet, a turbulent river, a waterfall, waves that come to die on the beach. It is at the same time the voice of the sky, the earth and the sea. An ancient voice of more than 500 million years, which has long been alone on earth,” he writes. Then comes biophony, the voice of living organisms, which is sometimes transmitted to us by strange gymnastics.
A sound gymnastics
First the insects and mushrooms. “To emit its summer stridulations, the locust rubs the posterior part of its femur against the margin of its wings in a very rapid back and forth movement,” describes Michel Leboeuf. The beluga emits ultrasound, “using its jaw and the fatty and fibrous tissues of its rounded forehead”. Finally, “anthropophony” integrates human noises. Needless to say, these sounds increasingly tend to drown out all others: the sounds of cars speeding on the roads, the sound of lawn mowers, the sound of horns and jackhammers. Is there any way to escape it?
Indeed, it is not only humans who are stressed by noise pollution. Scientists have shown that the sage grouse, a plains bird of the American West, produces 16.7% more cortisol when exposed to high noise levels. Michel Leboeuf even suggests that deafening noise has an effect on the growth of forests, because jays, responsible for dispersing seeds, flee places where noise pollution is too high.
The familiar sound of a foraging bee or a butterfly would have a stimulating effect on certain flowers. In fact, researchers have demonstrated that the biennial evening primrose raises its sugar level in less than three minutes when it perceives this frequency. “By raising the sugar level (up to 20% more) of its nectar to make it more attractive, the plant receives a longer visit from the insect on its flower, and therefore a greater quantity of pollen sticks on the insect’s legs. The plant thus has a greater chance of fertilizing other evening primrose flowers in the same area and of transmitting its genetic heritage to the next generation,” writes Michel Leboeuf.
In an interview, he explains that it is technology that has allowed “acoustic ecology” to develop in recent years.
“Technology now allows us to leave equipment for weeks in the forest and record continuously. It’s an incredible source of data,” he says. We can record bats, for example, whose ultrasounds are inaudible to us, and then reproduce them by increasing the volume.
Animal orchestra
In the animal kingdom, sound is closely linked to survival. We detect the song of love, associated with reproduction, the “war songs”, or defense of the territory, and also the songs of contact, alarm and distress. One theory is that the songs of species are dispersed so that each can be heard. “It’s a theory that’s been around for several decades,” he says. The hypothesis comes from Bernie Krause, a musician who ended up devoting long studies to the subject. “I think he’s saying that all species arrange among themselves to emit different frequencies, so that they can get their message across. »
This is how birds emitting lower frequencies, which travel more easily, such as the white-throated sparrow or the Swainson’s thrush, stay at the bottom of trees, while those whose song is higher-pitched, such as the field bunting or golden-crowned wren, stay at the top, taking greater advantage of the wind’s reach.
Every spring I hear less and less. That was the trigger for trying to describe the soundscape before I couldn’t remember it anymore.
Michel Leboeuf’s book, however, has farewell overtones. Human colonization threatens our soundscape. Michel Leboeuf takes up the injunction to protect 30% of Quebec territory from development, but he believes that additional efforts should be made in southern Quebec, particularly in wildlife reserves.
“We all agree with the principle [de protéger 30 % du territoire], but this territory is more difficult to find in southern Quebec, because we are on private land most of the time. It is certain that such measures would make forestry companies cringe, but there is surely a way to find protected areas in these reserves, in these territories, which are already well marked. It’s easy to find several dozen protected hectares there, or even hundreds or thousands. »
It is not too late to act on biodiversity, he emphasizes. He is also delighted that his book will be released in the spring. “Because it is in spring that the choir is strongest, that the birds and frogs sing, etc. Every spring I hear less and less. That was the trigger for trying to describe the soundscape before I couldn’t remember it anymore. »