Jennifer’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the garden, which, whilst small, had three large trees in it which had grown as high as Jennifer’s window.
Each morning, as she woke up and lay in bed, she would listen to the birdsong in the trees outside. It always sounded like excited and happy singing, and before Jennifer got up she liked to listen and imagine what they were saying. Were they just all wishing each other good morning, or were they telling jokes, or were they explaining their adventures or the dreams that they’d just had?
And then one morning as Jennifer woke up and listened, she thought she could hear something different in the bird’s calling and chirping. It sounded… a little more urgent.
The next morning, she listened more carefully and she was sure of it - the birdsong was shrill and panicked. She went to the window and opened it. Now the birdsong was louder and she was sure she could tell that the birds were scared or frightened about something.
Although she’d never done it before, she had the idea to hold her hand out of the window, her palm raised to the sky, when almost immediately a small sparrow landed on it. It was chirping desperately and loudly, looking up at Jennifer with worried, pleading eyes.
Whatever could be the matter? But before she could ask, it flew away quickly into the trees.
And anyway, even if it had stayed, how could Jennifer ask it anything? She didn’t know how to speak in birdsong.
That night as Jennifer lay in bed, she was unable to sleep. Normally the garden was still and quiet at the this time of night, but unusually she could still hear some of the birds calling out - as if it were an emergency.
It was often in the middle of the night that Jennifer had her best ideas, and so it was - that as she lay there, she knew what to do.
The next morning, as she woke to the sound of even louder and even more despairing and anguished birdsong, she snuck through to Mummy and Daddy’s room and picked up Daddy’s phone. She found his voice recorder app, where Daddy often liked to record his thoughts or important details, and - opening her bedroom window and putting the phone through it - pressed the red button to begin a fresh recording.
After about thirty seconds, she stopped the recording and rushed downstairs to the living room where they kept the computer. The computer was for everyone to use, but really only Jennifer and her brother Dan used it. Dan would use it to play games, but Jennifer liked to know how things worked, and she used it for coding. She used it to learn how computers speak. And so if she could learn how computers speak, and code a computer to do what she wanted, maybe she could write a program that told her what birds were saying?
She plugged in daddy’s phone and let the computer listen to the recording she’d made of the birdsong, and then - writing her own special code - she tried to make it translate to human speech. Nervously, she pressed play.
What she heard was terrible and upsetting. It wasn’t birdsong anymore, but lots of birds saying “Where’s Sammy?” “Where can he be?” “We’ve lost Sammy” “Sammy where are you?”
Jennifer thought quickly and then reached for Daddy’s phone again. Using the voice recorder app she said into it “Who is Sammy” and then reversed the computer program to translate it the other way into birdsong.
She ran upstairs to her bedroom, opened the window, turned the phone up as loud as it could go and played her question “Who is Sammy?” out into the garden, where it chirped across the garden as birdsong.
Suddenly, every bird went silent.
Then one, then two, then three, then ten then thirty then fifty birds fluttered towards her quickly, crying out madly. Jennifer quickly turned the phone back onto record, and then ran downstairs to the computer where she translated what they were saying into human speech.
“Sammy is our baby” “Sammy is a little bird” “Sammy is lost” “Do you know where Sammy is” “Have you seen him?”
Jennifer’s heart sunk and her tummy turned. The birds were all upset because they’d lost one of their babies, a baby called Sammy! And they’d been upset for days now and so Sammy must have been lost for all that time! Oh no!
Her brother Dan entered the living room and looked disappointed “Oh, you’re on the computer? I wanted to play.”
“We’ve got to play a different game, Dan, a really important game!” said Jennifer. “Go and get Mummy’s phone.”
“Why?”
“Just do it! It’s an emergency!”
Before Dan could return, Jennifer recored “Sammy, where are you?” into the computer and translated it into birdsong. She put it onto Daddy’s phone, and when Dan returned downstairs, onto Mummy’s phone too.
Then they went out into the garden and began to play the birdsong.
“What are we doing?” Asked Dan, confused at the sound coming out of the phone. To him, it just sounded like birds.
“Listen for the call of a small bird!” Said Jennifer. “Try the next garden. I’ll go this way.”
Jennifer went through garden after garden playing her message until she heard a very faint, very weak call. It was coming from a small shed. She listened very carefully, and bending down to look under the shed saw a very tiny and very hungry little sparrow.
“You must be Sammy,” she whispered and held out her hand. The small baby bird looked nervously at it, but then slowly came forward from under the shed and let Jennifer gently pick him up.
She ran back to her house, up the stairs to her bedroom and seeing that the window was still open, held Sammy out carefully in her hand.
Within seconds, all the birds from the garden had flocked around the window, chirping manically. One of the larger ones picked Sammy up in its beak and flew him quickly away to a nest in one of the branches.
The chirping was so loud that Jennifer remembered Daddy’s phone and recorded it. Downstairs at the computer she translated it and heard that all the birds were saying “Thank you!”
And so every morning, when she woke up and listened to the happy chirping of the birds outside, she didn’t have to imagine what they were saying. Instead, she could listen to them saying good morning to each other, telling jokes, and telling stories about the adventures and dreams that they’d just had.
From then on, Jennifer spoke to the birds in the garden almost every day thanks to her clever computer program, and gradually, as she got used to the sounds, she could speak to them in birdsong herself.
And the bird who always chirped the loudest, and came to her window first, was Sammy.
