Recently I visited Tokyo for the first time and was immediately struck by the bird calls I would hear at each train station. In an urban conglomeration of 37 million people, it was a pleasant surprise to think birds were thriving. But when I heard the distinctive two-note call of a cuckoo, I became suspicious.
It was then that I discovered that they piped in bird sounds to help visually impaired people navigate the extremely busy stations. In the vast megapolis itself there were very few birds. With the lack of rubbish on the streets, there were hardly even any pigeons or crows compared with Australian cities.
