Birdsong

Singing Indigo Bunting

As any serious bird-watcher knows, the term that denotes our hobby is terribly misleading.  A newcomer or an outsider usually assumes that because the pursuit is called “bird-watching”, then they should always be able to see birds, and see them well.  Binoculars, naturally, are often thought of as instruments serving to endow bird-watchers with a nearly super-human ability to see the birds that fly their merry ways, unseen to the casual observer.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  The fact is, “bird-watching” could just as easily be called “bird-listening.”  According to bird-watching experts, most birders (a term I prefer to bird-watchers—but due more to its brevity than its accuracy) identify at least 80 percent of the birds they find by sound, not sight.  Admittedly, we birders could probably actually see a fair chunk of this 80 percent if we made the effort to look, but in a lot of cases, these birds call and sing from the middle of dense woods, marshes, briar thickets—places we’d rather not go.  Of course, if the bird making sounds in this uninviting terrain is one that is new or especially exciting to us, we’re more than happy to make the effort to actually see it, even if it means braving poison ivy, saw-edged marsh grasses, skin-ripping greenbriar, ticks, mosquitoes, and venomous snakes; or maneuvering more mundane obstacles such as fallen trees, creeks, holes, gnats, etc.  And, succeeding in the face of all these impediments—finally seeing the rare bird—wins the hardworking birder a valuable excuse to brag at the next bird club meeting.

But I digress.  Another great truth of birding: binoculars are excellent tools, and without them birding as we know it would be next to impossible.  However, they will not give you any extraordinary abilities in locating birds; the most they can do is magnify what you’re seeing, so that the amazing beauty and variety of birds are more apparent.  As to locating birds, the only way to improve this skill is with practice.  Even with years of field experience, though, there are some birds that will manage to elude you, or at least elude your eyes.

I’m certainly not immune to the caprices of bird behavior.  The times that I’ve been outmaneuvered by birds are too numerous to name.  Sometimes it is an individual bird on one particular day; other times an entire species seemingly conspires against my earnest efforts to see it.  For example, I have yet to observe The Chuck-will’s-widow and Whip-poor-will—both secretive night birds with calls proclaiming their names—up close and through binoculars.  I have seen a live Chuck-wills-widow in the wild—it flew up from the road in front of the family car one night.  I saw just enough of its brown wings and white-bordered tail to positively identify it.  These birds’ secrecy is part of their mystique, though, so I’m perfectly happy to just listen to their rhythmic, intriguing nighttime songs, and if I happen to see one in full view someday, so much the better.

Other nocturnal birds like owls also prove elusive.  However, since owls are generally large and hunt from relatively prominent places—not impenetrable thickets like the haunts of the Chuck-wills-widow and Whip-poor-will—they are usually a little easier to observe.  Where I live in Macon, there are Great Horned Owls that live and hunt around the pastures and backyard pecan orchards.  I have seen them on a number of occasions, but more often I hear their resonant hoots, especially on moonlit nights in late winter when the trees are bare.  It’s a very comforting sound, and it foretells the owls’ courtship and eventual nesting, since these charismatic hunters breed and raise young very early in the year.

Sometimes vocal but difficult-to-see birds can be very frustrating.  The arrival of spring brings lots of migrating songbirds, many of which choose to proclaim their territories through song from the tops of the very tallest trees.  Then, it is literally a pain in the neck to try to see these birds, craning your head back as you look through your binoculars, trying to focus on the five-inch long warbler flitting forty feet above you as it sings its squeaky melody.  Of course, it could be worse; a lot of warbler songs are too high-pitched for some people to hear—the songs of Blackpoll, Bay-breasted, Black-throated Green, and Blackburnian Warblers, for example.  Even John James Audubon, one of the founders of American ornithology, is said to have had difficulty hearing the songs of a number of birds, especially wood-warblers.  On the other hand, several warbler species have very loud songs and are relatively easy to see; go into a swampy woodland, and you may see and hear a vivid yellow Prothonotary Warbler making its shrill tweet tweet tweet tweet song in the deep, gloomy shade of the cypress trees.  I promise you, it’s an amazing experience.

One of my favorite warblers, interestingly, is one that I haven’t actually seen more than a few times.  Not that that’s anything unusual: Swainson’s Warblers are notoriously tricky to see.  One of these sightings was of a bird flying away after I attempted to creep on it while it sang in a thicket.  More recently, this year I heard a Swainson’s Warbler in an overgrown wood during a spring migration survey.  After tallying it, I decided to walk through the dense undergrowth in hopes of spotting it.  Sure enough, as soon as I deduced what direction it was in, the bird moved to another spot and began its loud, ringing song again.  Despite the frustration it sometimes provokes in me, this incredibly secretive behavior coupled with the interesting song is one of the reasons I find the Swainson’s Warbler so fascinating, and I always enjoy encounters with them, visual or otherwise.

Probably you can think of at least a few birds whose sounds are particularly meaningful to you in some way.  Maybe they evoke fond memories; or are associated with certain seasons or times of day; or perhaps are simply beautiful, amusing, awe-inspiring…the list goes on.  The robin’s hurried morning warblings, the mockingbird’s nighttime virtuoso recital, the softly lilting tur-a-lee of the bluebird, the energetic drummings of woodpeckers, the shrill scream of a Red-tailed Hawk, the echoing honks of migrating geese—these and countless other calls not only hold special significance to birders, but are familiar sounds in our day-to-day relationship with the natural world.  Even something as seemingly mundane as a crow’s guttural caw caw can bring a lot of interesting feelings to an observer.

Seeing birds is always a pleasure, but sometimes it helps to just stop and listen to them as they go about their lives.  This can be difficult; it’s hard to resist the impulse to search for a bird that you can hear but not see (after all, this is bird-watching), but even hearing birds fills you in on interesting aspects of their ecology, enables you to identify them, and just makes birding more fun and meaningful.  Another thing to keep in mind: although you can see the birds that are right in front of your eyes during birding jaunts, their songs are all around you.