(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY LAUREN ZIMA

The city of Lancaster, California, is into tweeting -- old-school tweeting, that is -- from real birds.  Here’s CBS.

“The city plays calming bird calls over loudspeakers. The mayor says crime rates are falling because of this.”

That’s right -- the town is blasting bird songs to cut crime by soothing citizens. The sounds have played on 70 loudspeakers in Lancaster for five hours a day for the last 10 months. The Wall Street Journal spoke with Mayor R. Rex Parris -- who says it’s working.

“Minor crimes in Lancaster fell about 15% last year, compared with 2010, says the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, this city being part of the county, and serious crimes fell about 6%. ‘We're not seeing that impulse-control crime,’ Mr. Parris says. ‘It has just been astonishing to us how the community has changed …’”

Parris purchased the songs in England. They include robins, wrens and blackbirds. The Daily Mail reports on the veracity of his logic.

“Experts believe that birdsong can have a soothing effect by reducing cortisol and adrenaline, two hormones which are produced by the human body in response to stress.”

But as Newser reports -- the drop in crime might not be so unusual.

“‘There's also a drop in crime in every other major and minor city,’ says a criminology expert.”