Tweets From Beaks

Last week Center Parcs UK let its Twitter feed go to the birds. During what it called #RealTweetWeek, the company, which operates five resorts in England, tweeted birdsongs recorded at its forests and challenged people to identify the species in them. The sound clips were collected by Parcs’ rangers, who manage 2,000 acres of woods and conduct biodiversity surveys on the properties with local wildlife trusts.

The week began with a “Dawn Chorus,” featuring many of the birds visitors can expect to wake up to on a typical morning at a Center Parcs’ resort. Tweets showcasing individual songs and species, like Blue, Coal, and Long-tailed tits, the Chaffinch, and the European Robin, soon followed. In all, 13 recordings have been released.

Mike Hill, a conservation ranger with Center Parcs, says the inspiration behind the campaign came from the many visitors who remark on the abundance of birdsongs in the forests compared to what they hear around their homes. “We thought it would be a lovely touch to give people the chance to listen to the sounds of the birds in our forests—wherever they are—through social media,” says Hill. “We couldn’t resist doing this through Twitter given the name!”

Hill adds that the company also teamed up with major bird groups, like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to make the campaign more informative and help raise awareness for both bird conservation and the work done by the organizations. “The RSPB [does] such brilliant work to protect our natural bird species within the United Kingdom—something we feel very passionate about as a business,” says Hill.

The Parcs’ birds relinquished their hold on the company’s Twitter account on Friday, but the recordings are still available on its feed and YouTube account. By the end of the week the #RealTweetWeek campaign had reached more than 260,000 people.

These British birds weren’t the first to hop on to Twitter. Back in 2011, Latvian bird lover Voldemars Dudums set up @hungry_birds, featuring the tweets of tom tits (the generic term for Europe’s spectrum of tit species) he lured to his backyard by covering a computer keyboard with bacon fat.

QQS1111```````````````1```OOOOOMMMGGG http://t.co/jE2p2jPD @irLV

— Hungry Birds (@hungry_birds) March 16, 2012

Though the tweets were random—long series of letters and numbers strung together—the birds were prolific, averaging 150 tweets a day. The account currently boasts 16,600 followers, despite being inactive since December of 2012, and has won a slew of awards for its imaginative nature.

In an interview with Wired, Dudums justified the fanfare. “Yes, one may say it is quite silly,” he said. “But if you look at what people sometimes say on Twitter, then the tom tits’ messages are still okay.”