Did you catch the Grammys this past weekend? Me either. I would have checked in if I had known about it, but I don’t have cable anymore. It’s for the best – as hip as I am, I have to Google an increasing percentage of the artists with each passing year and I don’t like it. When I looked up the nominees to research this piece – believe or not, I do research these pieces - there was one especially head-scratching artist nominated for Record of the Year – the Beatles. Where do these kids get their band names these days? But seriously, I think they throw in a couple of these ancient artists each year in hopes that some of the over 60 set will keep watching. In any case, this all reminded me that we are overdue for another episode of everyone’s favorite made-up, bird related, Cape Cod-based award show: the Bird Grammys!
Let’s get right to the categories. First up is the always competitive “eponymous record of the year”, also known as the shouting your name over and over category, and the nominees are: Eastern Phoebe, Whip-poor-will, Killdeer, and Northern Bobwhite
The winner, wings down, is Whip-poor-will. The ornithologist Don Kroodsma once counted a whip-poor-will’s songs over the course of an entire night, and it screamed it’s name more than 20,000 times, including 2500 times in one hour. That is one intense gig from a bird that had to be really high on uppers.
Next up, the best cover artist nominees include Gray Catbird, the Northern Mockingbird, the European Starling, and the Blue Jay. The clear winner is the mockingbird – while catbirds, starlings, and Blue Jays mostly do original material, with the jays only occasionally imitating hawks, a mockingbird is a true one-man cover band, to the point where the original artists can’t tell the difference. Here’s one that imitates a Blue Jay, a Carolina Wren, and a Flicker, among other things.
Next, we have the soundtrack artist lifetime achievement award, and it goes to the long suffering Red-tailed Hawk. This bird’s work has been used in thousands of films, but sadly has mostly been attributed to other more glamorous species like Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon. It’s like that Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal from the 80’s but worse. Red-tailed Hawks clearly need to fire their agent and start seeking back-pay.
Our final category, Most Beautiful Song of the Year, was a difficult one for the judges, who are me, and it came down to the Hermit Thrush and the tiny Winter Wren. Ultimately the Winter Wren came out on top with this gorgeous, deceptively complex piece that evokes the sound of the thickly wooded streams where they nest.
Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you at the Bird Grammys next year, or whenever I get around to doing it again. Lastly, nominated due to a mix up were the Byrds, the Eagles, Flock of Seagulls, and Wings. We regret the error, and we especially apologize to Sir Paul McCartney who came all this way to the Cape for nothing.