ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between human and bird emotions under the pressures of twentieth-century change. It also explores human emotional responses to birdsong, while also considering accounts of bird emotions, and what interactions can take place when the two meet. The chapter looks at fear, stress and anxiety as characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century and they form the emotional context for an analysis of the reception and place of birdsong in human lives. Birds would help Britain win the war and their recruitment could be seen as extending the notion of a purely 'People's War'. John Reith's use of the word 'emotionalism' is curious and powerful, usually meaning during this period a tendency towards a state of hysteria or nervous agitation. Prior to the formation of the BBC, the culture of wireless radio revolved around the potential of an enchanted technology that allowed sounds, like spirits, to move invisibly and almost instantaneously through the air.
