Songs of praise for Wootton Bassett graduate (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Songs of praise for Wootton Bassett graduate

7:00am Saturday 31st July 2010 in

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Graduate Georgie Jefferies has made an interesting discovery into the way birds communicate.

Mrs Jefferies, 35, from Wootton Bassett has this year achieved a 2:1 BSc (Hons) in animal management at Wiltshire College Lackham.

For her third-year dissertation she looked into the differences between the songs of blackbirds. Mrs Jefferies was comparing their calls at dawn with those made at dusk.

The study was a collaboration between Wiltshire College and the Royal Agricultural College, the Wildlife Sound Recording Society and the British Library Sound Archive.

Mrs Jefferies analysed more than 90 recordings of birdsong and showed that the blackbird changes the pitch of its song according to how far it wants the sound to travel.

She said: “Thanks to the course, I now have a fulltime job at the Living Rainforest in Newbury where we are doing a study into the improvement of animal welfare in captivity. Eventually I would like to return to my passion, which is birds.”