Last week Center Parcs UK let its Twitter feed go to the birds. During what it called , 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鈥 rangers, who manage 2,000 acres of woods and conduct biodiversity surveys on the properties with local wildlife trusts.
The week began with a 鈥淒awn Chorus,鈥 featuring many of the birds visitors can expect to wake up to on a typical morning at a Center Parcs鈥 resort. Tweets showcasing individual songs and species, like Blue, Coal, and Long-tailed tits, the Chaffinch, and the European Robin, soon followed. In all, 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. 鈥淲e thought it would be a lovely touch to give people the chance to listen to the sounds of the birds in our forests鈥攚herever they are鈥攖hrough social media,鈥 says Hill. 鈥淲e couldn鈥檛 resist doing this through Twitter given the name!鈥
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. 鈥淭he RSPB [does] such brilliant work to protect our natural bird species within the United Kingdom鈥攕omething we feel very passionate about as a business,鈥 says Hill.
The Parcs鈥 birds relinquished their hold on the company鈥檚 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鈥檛 the first to hop on to Twitter. Back in 2011, Latvian bird lover Voldemars Dudums set up , featuring the tweets of (the generic term for Europe鈥檚 spectrum of tit species) he lured to his backyard by covering a computerkeyboard with bacon fat
QQS1111```````````````1```OOOOOMMMGGG
鈥 Hungry Birds (@hungry_birds)
Though the tweets were random鈥攍ong series of letters and numbers strung together鈥攖he 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 , Dudums justified the fanfare. 鈥淵es, one may say it is quite silly,鈥 he said. 鈥淏ut if you look at what people sometimes say on Twitter, then the tom tits鈥 messages are still okay.鈥