The Death of a Songbird: Listening to Worlds in their (Un)Making

Abstract

This thesis tells the extinction story of the regent honeyeater (Anthochaera phrygia), a critically endangered songbird endemic to the forests and woodlands of southeast Australia. Through attention to the perceived loss of regent honeyeater song, this thesis critically engages with various epistemic practices within the natural sciences, particularly ecological and ethological literatures, to explore their world-making effects in the context of endangered-species conservation and extinction. It considers conservation and research efforts taking place across a variety of forested and deforested landscapes, as well as in laboratories and zoological gardens. In doing so, this thesis explores how animal behaviour shapes and is shaped by ecological and social environments, attending to the various ways in which the social and cultural behaviours of birds, such as song, are both embodied and emplaced in multispecies contexts. This attention helps us to better hear the ways in which various humans are implicated in the making and unmaking of species and their worlds. Ultimately, the stories told throughout this thesis reveal the many worlds contained within a song and the possibilities and limitations of what may be required in attending to others in a time of extinctions.