Professor Ofer Tchernichovski of The City College of New York very graciously extended an invitation to visit his research lab in the quixotically suffering science building on campus. His research involves the study of birdsong. Ofer met us outside of the building on a lovely summer day and led us to the lab.

The lab itself is a wonderful expression of human creativity and imagination. The lab  studies the song of Zebra Finches. They breed in normal cages and the lab has refitted large picnic coolers into sound isolated environments, each with controlled light and fresh air to be used for specific studies and analysis. Each of these sound insulated coolers also has sound recording instruments installed inside. Stacks of these refitted coolers fill a large room. Hundreds of birds are in this room but they can just barely be heard. Each sound they make is electronically recorded and analyzed.  In an adjacent room, stacks of computers are used to save and analyze the data from the finch’s song. 

The purpose of this research is to understand the origins of human speech and the biological basis of speech.

Ofer played the a Veery song for us at very slow speed and it was a lovely melody in a major key. At normal speed it was a sweet chirp. Ofer told us about the work of David Rothenberg, author of Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song. On David Rothenberg’s site, you can listen to the wonderful slowed down bird song.

Later I walked the around the campus and recalled my student days at CCNY and stood at the spot where thousands of students gathered to protest the invasion of Cambodia and to stop all classes in protest of our governments policies and actions.

But today, in spite of an unpopular war, the trashing of our constitution by the administration in Washington, despite the use of terrible torture that even our military opposes, now there were students just walking and birds singing in the sunshine of a lovely summer’s day…and a sign in front of Shepard Hall warning these very same students not to play frisbee or other sports on the lawns, supposedly for their safety.

 Red Tail Hawk on Shepard Hall of CCNY