An album made entirely of endangered bird sounds beat Taylor Swift on a top 50 chart, which is as it should be:

A red-tailed black cockatoo is seen sitting on a branch with the moon behind it. The bird is one of more than 50 featured on the album Songs of Disappearance that features the sounds of many of Australia’s endangered birds. Byron Hakanson/Birdlife Australia

For most of December, Adele had the top-selling album in Australia, followed by Ed Sheeran, and then there was a collection of absolute bangers that took everyone by surprise.

Songs Of Disappearance is an entire album of calls from endangered Australian birds. Last month, it briefly perched at No. 3 on the country’s top 50 albums chart – ahead of Taylor Swift.

Anthony Albrecht produced the album with his arts organization, the Bowerbird Collective. He’s a musician and a Ph.D. candidate at Charles Darwin University, where his adviser is professor Stephen Garnett.

“I knew it was an ambitious thing to suggest and — I don’t know. Stephen’s a little bit crazy like me, and he said, let’s do this,” Albrecht said.

Songs Of Disappearance was released with a university report that found 1 in 6 Australian bird species are now threatened. The album captures 53 of those species.

Some sing what you might think of as bird songs, but not all of them. Sean Dooley represents the conservation organization Birdlife Australia…

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