YEARS AGO I joked that the next niche radio format to be attempted would be continuous bird calls. I never imagined that it could actually happen, but it has, and the results are quite pleasant.

Apparently one of the Digital Audio Broadcast channels in Great Britain (yes, they have real over-the-air digital radio in the UK, not the dysfunctional “HD Radio” that the media moguls forced on this country) started broadcasting ambient bird calls and other natural forest sounds about a year ago, and it developed quite a following. (I have no idea if the station’s creator, Quentin Howard, ever heard of my decades-old suggestion or not.)

But the station has been axed by channel owner DigitalOne (a British quasi-governmental digital radio monopoly) and replaced by something described as “Amazing Radio, playing rock, indie, urban and jazz tunes,” according to the UK’s Independent newspaper. Ho hum.

Birdsong Radio began by broadcasting a 20-minute loop of chirps and tweets originally recorded for a stage play sound effect in 1991 at Howard’s home garden in West Lavington, Wiltshire. You can still hear that original loop at http://radiobirdsong.com where station supporters have built a home on the Web. Another group of birdsong lovers has built an even more elaborate online station, http://www.birdsongradio.com/ with superb fidelity and a larger variety of recordings.

Howard says of the over-the-air station’s cancellation “I think it’s a bit of a stunt to get attention for the new radio station because there’s enough empty slots on digital radio for both. There’s a lot of very cross people out there.”

I find Birdsong Radio a delightful change from conventional radio, and its outdoors ambience will be augmenting the aural atmosphere of my office often in the future.

GANDHI ARTICLE REPRINTED: My essay on the racial-nationalist views of Mahatma Gandhi has just been republished by Britain’s Historical Review Press. It’s quite an honor to be published alongside such luminaries as H.L. Mencken and Thomas Jefferson.

OUTRAGEOUS IMPRISONMENT: Two Britons — Simon Sheppard, a writer and behavioral scientist, and Stephen Whittle, a freelance writer and satirist — languished a year in American jails though they committed no crimes whatever under American law. They fled to the U.S. seeking asylum because they fell afoul of tyrannical anti-free-speech laws in Britain and faced imprisonment merely for expressing their ideas and publishing the ideas of others — such as Robert Crumb cartoons! — on a Web page. If anyone deserves asylum here, they do. The pair, dubbed the Heretical Two, are prime examples of our abandonment of our once-proud tradition of freedom of expression. They’ve now been forcibly returned to Britain, where they face sentencing for their “crimes” on July 10. Before we cast stones at Iran, we need to examine our own societies.

DOCTOR’S JOURNAL FIGHTS ISRAEL LOBBY: ‘The British Medical Journal, one of the most respected publications of its kind, has issued a stern editorial complaining about orchestrated campaigns in support of Israel,’ according to Religious Intelligence News. The BMJ also reveals for the first time that in 1981, “when World Medicine, a popular medical magazine, published an article criticising the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin… the resulting [Jewish] campaign led to the dismissal of Michael O’Donnell as editor and the closure of the magazine. [Emphasis ours.] “Such campaigns cannot be allowed to succeed – not so much because they are wrong about the issues, but because their ultimate aim is censorship and suppression by means of intimidation”’