Bird Watching by Listening

Bird watching by listening takes a well tuned ear or the Merlin App on your phone. It can hear multiple birds at the same time.

 

Bird Watching by Listening

What are birds telling us with their songs? My local mockingbird is the neighborhood DJ. It sings the songs it has heard with a rip and a twist to make the song his own. Then each morning it announces its new tune to the world. There is a great article in Nature Magazine on bird songs and calls, and their acquisition. 

Bird songs and calls are woven into the fabric of our own stories. For me, the "khaws" of a hundred crows was the background music of Kathmandu. The loon's haunting call as my dad and I canoed the Bowron Lakes in northern British Columbia provided the atmospheric prose to incredible cinematography.  The screech of a sky full of buzzards fighting over the entrails of recently disemboweled cadavers at the top of the world were haunting laments. I feel sorry for the people who live where the birds seldom sing. For birds are not only the portents of death, but also of birth and peace. Birds are the soundtrack of life.

Both my brother and I raised parakeets as teenagers. My dad and I built a large aviary in Mira Loma, California. I was very excited by the first hatchling. I named the bird "Irving". I handled Irving from his first day, and he and I became attached. We bonded. When Irving matured, he moved into the house. Some people may be familiar with dogs getting all excited when you get home after a day of work or school. Well that was Irving. When he calmed down, he would go into a long litany of everything that had happened during the day. However, I couldn't understand a word he said. 

Audio Discrimination

Darn, I have the same problem with languages I was taught such as Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese. Just because I do not understand, it does not diminish the message. Anyway, I have trouble discriminating audio. One-on-one conversations I'm fine. Put the same conversation in a crowded restaurant and I'm lucky if I pick up half the words. I might ask my wife afterwards if that person was describing their vacation or an alien abduction. I'm very good at smiling and nodding. 

All that is to say, I enjoy going out and listening to the birds, but if there are multiple sources, I have trouble finding or spotting the individual singer. Linda is a great bird spotter. My brother is the bird photographer. My job when "bird watching by listening" is to listen. Thankfully I have the Merlin App on my phone. 

Merlin

The Merlin App from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is smart enough to hear the individual conversations in a locations crowded with multiple birds songs.

Using the Merlin App, I can tell the group which birds are around us. Here's a sample of bird watching by listening in my backyard for 3 minutes this week:

In the past month we have been bird watching by listening in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz Island, Palm Springs, Huntington Gardens near Pasadena, and UC Riverside Botanical Gardens. Here are a few of the birds captured by my brother.

Ladderback Woodpecker in Joshua Tree from John Willis

Island Scrub Jay from John Willis

Merlin Got Me Trouble

On one of the walks I thought I would try talking to the birds. The Merlin App not only listens, it also has a large library of bird songs and calls. We were walking past a large group of California Gulls in a park near the University of California at Santa Barbara.

They were minding their own business, but I thought I would say hello. The greeting is not in my Google translate, but I thought I would use one of the gull calls in the Merlin app. The recording from Merlin is below. 

The result... well you remember the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The one where all of a sudden people are surrounded by a mob of birds? I either insulted the birds, or perhaps I just said "food." Very quickly I was surrounded by birds. My suggestion. Do not try talking to birds. Try listening.

Go for a walk where the birds live. Better yet, go for a walk with someone you love. Hold hands. Take off your ear buds and listen to the song of the birds. Have a moment. Nature has created a soundtrack for your journey.