Identifying by Ear Getting Better

IDENTIFYING BY EAR NOT ALWAYS EASY, BUT GETTING BETTER  

May/June, 2011 issue
 
 After  almost 40 years of listening to the recorded songs of over 300  species  of birds known to occur in this area, I am pleased that I can now   identify by ear almost everything I hear singing in the field. I even  offer  workshops at Prince Edward County’s popular Birding Festival on  identifying by  ear. However, while I can offer a few tips on how to  recognize certain sounds,  it isn’t something one can learn in a  two-hour workshop; it needs to be  committed to memory, and that takes  time – a lot of it! 
  
 Identifying  by ear is an ongoing exercise. Surprises are thrown at  listeners of  bird song from every direction. Northern parulas that arrive here  from  their wintering grounds in Mexico in May have an interesting song, in  fact,  two. Described by Peterson in his field guide as a “buzzy trill  that climbs the  scale and trips over at the top,” we can compare it to  the sound of a zipper  being zipped up. Another song is a series of  buzzy notes, terminating in a sort  of trill. But why do large numbers  of these parulas upon arrival, favour one  song over another, suddenly  swinging over to another delivery at a given time as  though governed by  a single impulse? Is it temperature related? Does it have  something to  do with one song used as an expression of joy while another is   reserved for territorial claims? We may never know – and really – is it   necessary that we do? One of the joys of birding is the speculation and   investigation into why birds do what they do. Sometimes, as film  makers John and  Janet Foster say, the best ending to any wildlife story  is a mystery.
  
 Adding  to the problems in identifying by ear are dialects. That’s right.   Birds have local dialects. Some are detectable, but despite the subtle   differences, still reasonably identifiable. Some dialects are so subtle  that  only electronic analysis can detect the differences. All  geographic populations  of birds have different dialects, much the same  as we do, depending on where we  live. Yellow warblers in Kaladar  probably sound different from those in  Algonquin, who sound different  from those at Point Pelee, and they all sound  different from the  resident yellow warblers in Florida who do not migrate. We  may not be  able to detect these differences, but electronic analysis can. It has   even been shown that migratory birds arriving here on territory, will  sing in  what can only be loosely termed a “southern accent”, having  picked it up from  their counterparts while wintering in the south. They  lose it quickly, of  course, once they are on territory. Amazing stuff,  when sophisticated electronic  equipment comes into play.
  
 So,  it’s not a case of learning one song, and applying it to a given   species of warbler. In most cases, we must learn several songs, and be  ready  when they throw a new one at us. Black-throated Green warblers  are notorious for  this, I find. Even the yellow warbler can sound like a  Nashville warbler once in  awhile, or a chestnut-sided warbler.  Sometimes you have to raise your  binoculars, just to make sure. Others  like the spirited staccato of the  Tennessee warbler is unmistakable as  is the yellowthroat, cerulean, and  ovenbird, as well as the notoriously  late mourning warbler. 
  
 Some  songs we don’t hear, at least, some of us can’t. Blackpoll warblers   are among our latest arrivals in the warbler family. It undertakes the  longest  migration route of any songbird, a few even travelling from  Brazil to Alaska,  some 8,000 kilometres. Some of this distance is over a  3,000 kilometre stretch  of the Atlantic Ocean - over 80 hours of  continuous flying. While most warblers  have rather pleasing, little  whistled songs, chirps and a variety of other  pleasant notes, the  blackpoll warbler has a song that is missed by many people  who are  unable to detect the extremely high frequency notes. One birder friend   who prides himself in being able to identify most birds by ear, claims  he can  see the bird singing through his binoculars, but he is unable to  hear a thing.  His ears just can’t pick up those thin notes that make  this bird unbearable to  people like myself who experience no trouble  hearing it. In fact, only three or  four songs from this bird, and I  will have developed an unbearable headache.  Liken it, if you will, to  someone dragging their fingernails down a school  blackboard. It  is a  frequency that I am unable to tolerate beyond 30 seconds.  
  
 There  are others out there, too, with similarly thin, but less irritating   high frequency songs. Only last year, I managed to successfully  differentiate  between the see-saw notes of the black-and-white warbler  and the very similarly  delivered song of the bay-breasted warbler.  Perhaps it was because someone had  already told me that a bay-breasted  warbler was around, and I purposely strained  to hear it, but there  seemed to be a definite difference between it and a  black-and-white  warbler that was singing nearby.  The Cape May warbler, too, has  a  similar song, and adds to the challenge of identifying these  “butterflies of  the bird world” by their songs. It has taken me 40  years to get this far.
  
 The  American redstart, also a warbler, is perhaps one of the most difficult   to identify by song alone. Its repertoire of songs is amazing, and  each one is  delivered differently, but after a few decades of being in  the field, it all  starts to register somehow. Today, it takes a very  talented redstart to fool  me.
  
 All  of these tiny members of the warbler family, having journeyed thousands   of kilometres from their southern wintering grounds, begin arriving in  our area  as early as late April, peaking in mid-May, and petering out  by early June as  they work their way to the boreal forests to breed. 
  
 Technology  in learning these songs is improving. We have come a long way  since  the days of Roger Tory Peterson’s long play recordings of birds when we   would have to start up the phonograph and gently drop the needle onto  the  record. Now we have CDs, MP3 files and the popular Thayer’s  interactive computer  program. One birder  always carries his hand held  IPod with him, the device no  thicker than a piece of thin cardboard,  containing the songs of every North  American bird species, and their  photos. I have just received my latest toy – a  preloaded 8 GB IPod with  a tiny portable IPod speaker that I can carry in the  field with me on  guided hikes. On it, multiple songs and photos of all the birds  of  North America, range maps, and a built in quiz to keep me on my toes.  And, if  I should get tired of listening to birds songs, it also has  enough memory to  hold almost 2,000 human songs!  
  
 Your  expertise will improve with each passing year. How hard can it be?   After all, there are probably no more than 130 variations of songs from  the 36  species of warblers that pass through each spring.
  
 For more information on birding and nature and guided hikes, check out the  NatureStuff website at www.naturestuff.net 
  
 Terry Sprague lives in Prince Edward County and is self-employed as a  professional interpretive naturalist.