Birds on the Wire

Brazilian composer, Jarbas Agnelli, saw a photograph in a news paper of birds sitting on five parallel telephone wires and decided to use their positions as notes on sheet music. Now I ask you, how much easier can it get? No complicated I-Ching interpretations, no trying to make oneself as objective as possible, attempting to put all preferences and tastes out of your mind, just letting the birds do what birds do and capitalizing off of it. Gosh, that's easy! In fact, that's an absolutely marvelous idea and I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first! Cage would be proud! Messiaen would be proud! I'm proud! All I'm wondering is... did he give the birds any sort of compensation for their help -or, since this was a photograph, was the photographer at least given credit? Does this sort of thing fall under the jurisdiction of copyright? :)