ABSTRACT
I have learnt two things from listening in on the conversation of birds. First, although the larger-than-human world is full of conversation, most of it is not about humans. Second, although most of the conversation of the larger-than-human world is not about us, it does not ignore us. We are not central, but neither are we absent. Although other species do not share our anthropocentric obsession, we are not separate from them, or they from us. Birds and our other relations do not ignore us; we aren’t alien to them, we live in the same place-communities, we co-evolved in the same world. Our acts are of some importance to them, but what we do and what is done to us are not the only significant happenings in the universe. Just as birds are not here for our benefit and use, nor are they particularly motivated by our every act and obsession. But sometimes they are.
