 Holla's tailor was an accomplished violinist, a former Oregon state fiddle champion with an established career and perfect pitch. When one day something quite unexpected happened she heard a pied butcher bird. It was my first trip to Australia in 2001 and I was in WA on a remote sheep station just wondering about when all of a sudden I heard a jazz flutist in a tree. It's the only way I can describe it and then there was an answer and then another answer I was in the middle of a trio of birds singing together and I had no idea birds singing trios. It was really an epiphany for me. As a researcher, most recently at Macquarie University, Dr Taylor has been studying, recording and transcribing pied butcher bird songs for 12 years. Taylor produces what she calls recompositions, musical arrangements that mimic and compliment pied butcher bird songs. Now, we'll come back to the music in a minute but let me just get a pied butcher bird in your mind. The pied butcher bird is native to Australia. They're black and white and they look a little bit like a magpie but they don't sound like a magpie. This? That's a magpie. Whereas this? That's a pied butcher bird. They're smaller than a magpie. They've got short feet and you don't see them, so you don't see them on the ground very much. You don't really see them. You don't hear them because the short feet allow them to maneuver into bushes and rob other birds' nests. It's always a shocking thing to witness and a very difficult thing to witness. They're not vegetarians. The pied butcher bird gets their name not just from robbing the nests but from then hanging the extra food up on a twig and a branch so they sort of run a butcher shop to create one of her recompositions. She fairly records pied butcher birds and transcribes their song into musical notation. She also makes a phrase by phrase sonogram, a visual representation of the sound. Her compositions combine musical instruments with field recordings such as other bird songs, insects or her fellow campers. I call them recompositions because I like to give most of the credit to the pied butcher birds and because it's not my goal to really improve on their songs, the whole point for me has been could I take a transcription and could I just assign it to a tuba or a flute or a cello and pretty much play it the way that the birds sang it and would it still be music? This question, is birdsong music, has become a central theme of Dr. Taylor's research and after many years of study she's convinced the answer is yes. You'll read that birdsong is not music because it's hardwired and that is just erroneous, it's not even a point that can be argued, it's just some people don't realise that songbirds learn their songs. So when you say they learn their songs, you know, you mean that they're not automatons, they're not hardwired to make that noise, they are consciously, creatively expressing themselves there. Yes, they've had to learn their song from their parents or from some other, in the case of pied butcher birds, they're learning their songs from other pied butcher birds and they, in the case of pied butcher birds, they are what they call open-ended learners so they continue to learn even in adulthood and they're quite inventive so songbirds learn their songs in the list of the other ones and songbirds make up about half of the 10,000 bird species so all of those, even if it's a simple song, if they're called a songbird it's because they've had to learn it, they aren't born with the capacity and if they don't hear it from their parents or other con specifics of the same species, they won't either won't produce it or won't produce it in a really species ordinary way so it's not nature or nurture, it's both. So another argument people have for why birdsong is not music is because birdsong is purely functional and again this is displaying ignorance of both birdsong and human music I believe because human music certainly is functional, it's not just pure enjoyment and of course pure enjoyment is still a function in any case so I think there's no just before you go and what do you mean by functional you know just explain what you mean there what functions does it the functions that birdsong is assumed to serve are territorial defense and made attraction and these are well proven in a few species and there's no reason to not think that this could extend to many or all species I believe that in species like highly sophisticated complex songs like the pied butcher bird that you cannot explain all of that through functionality and I don't think that aesthetics and function are mutually exclusive they're mutually enhanced you said human music can serve a function as well what what do you mean like what's an example there well we affirm our group and our taste through music and music accompanies all sorts of activities funerals weddings birthdays trying to get your homework done jogging you know it it certainly has many many functions and then there's the argument that birdsong is insufficiently complex to be called music certainly a lot of human music is simple formulaic repetitive and is not complex in harmony or contrapuntal effects so there's plenty of human music that is simple and then we look at some species like the brown thrasher who's got thousands of phrases they think they're improvised meaning that they can't find an order a logical or predictable order that they're delivered in and there's many other species like that lastly i asked holis taylor why does this matter why study this for 12 years she answered by quoting a famous american scientist called steven j gould well as steven j gould said we will not fight to say what we do not love and if we don't know the amazing things that animals non-human animals are accomplishing we'll feel less like trying to save them and so in this time of extinctions and climate change and loss of biodiversity it's just one small bit that i can do