Last summer, after forty years on the planet, including five living in what is virtually a bird sanctuary (and many others in settings that come close), I finally awoke to a basic fact: not only am I surrounded by amazingly beautiful avian singers, but I can actually learn more about them. Suddenly, saying to myself "oh, that familiar bird song--I have no need to know who the singer is," or "I've probably seen that bird many times--but I don't care about the name," became unsatisfactory. Having just traded eyeglasses for contact lenses, I also found myself able to use binoculars easily for the first time in my life. As has often been the case, the more careful attention I paid, with all available senses, to what surrounded me (in this case, the world of birds), the more intriguing it became, and the more deeply I felt its interconnections and its connections to the larger whole.
Since then I have had a number of moments of a type that I had experienced previously mostly with plants, geologic features, people, bodies of water, some slower-moving creatures, and various manifestations of fire and air. My insight at these times can be summed up roughly as "Birds Are God" (or "children of the Earth Mother," or "jewels of the Goddess," or however you want to describe the qualities of divinity). The combination of beauty and familiarity I find in my bird neighbors has become a grounding force in my life, inspiring not only more gratitude for being part of this world, but also more curiosity about it. Who are these winged musicians?
My first aid in starting to learn the songs of local birds was Peterson's Field Guide to Western Bird Songs, a two disc-set with song samples from 522 species occurring in Western North America, introduced individually by name. I also enrolled in a bird class, which helped me narrow down the possibilities of what I might be hearing (I created an edited version of the set containing only local species). A few months later, I learned about, and eventually acquired, a set of similar but more extensive field recordings, with longer song samples and a greater variety of calls: the four-CD Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Western Region, which includes 551 species. I created an edited version of this set too, this time more broadly, regionally focused. I enrolled in additional bird classes, and played my edited CDs while doing other things (like cleaning my yurt or laying out this magazine). Through this process of trying to match up what I hear on the recordings to what I hear all around me outside, I have learned to identify a certain number of birds by ear.
But helpful as they are, these bird-song identification sets alone are not adequate for this task. Many species are almost exasperatingly similar in the sounds they make, turning an enjoyable pastime into a source of frustration if one slips into being goal- rather than process-oriented. Certainly, I thought, there must be other people who've tried to do this--people who could help me become more adept at learning the potentially overwhelming diversity of these sounds, many of which can also be so similar.
While my bird classes are primarily visually-oriented, my teacher has often helped me learn more about songs and calls in that forum. But an essential aid in making use of, and tying together, all of these other resources--my bird classes, field trips, daily wanderings, and the Peterson's and Stokes ID sets--is Peterson's Western Birding by Ear: A Guide to Bird-Song Identification (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, New York, 1990). This is a 3-CD instructional course, rather than a comprehensive compilation of bird songs and calls. Richard K. Walton and Robert W. Lawson have listened long and hard to birds, and present here their insights into distinguishing the voices of 91 common birds. Their set also offers birders helpful tools for distinguishing among additional species; the basic principles which apply to listening to this representative selection of birds can be applied to others as well. The general introduction which starts Disc One lays out some of these principles, discusses the natural history of birds and bird sounds, and sets the tone for this set: an enthusiastic, personable approach reflecting the authors' love of the subject.
Following this introduction, Walton and Lawson immediately passed my first test, in the very first group of birds presented. My Peterson's and Stokes ID sets had left me with a big question, which was foremost on my mind when I received Birding By Ear: how can one possibly distinguish between an American robin and a black-headed grosbeak, or between either of those and a western tanager, without also seeing them? On my ID recordings, I had confused them repeatedly. Fortunately, the creators of Birding By Ear have grouped them (along with Cassin's vireo) into a group called "Sing-Songers," and by playing recordings of their songs and calls, interspersed with narrative, help us hear what makes them different from one another.
In the case of the robin, grosbeak, and tanager, this did not automatically confer the ability to instantly distinguish them in the field. For me, it took several additional days of conscious listening to the birds themselves, as well as listening to this track and getting some guidance from my bird class teacher and another friend, to become confident in telling them apart. But Walton and Lawson were major contributors to this breakthrough.
Following the "Sing-Songers," Walton and Lawson continue with additional groupings of birds that have some quality of vocalization in common but which (like all birds) can ultimately be distinguished, sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty. "Owls," "Name-Sayers," "Hawks," "Wood Warblers," and "Harsh Vocalizations" round out Disc One. Disc Two treats "Whistlers," "Warbling Songsters," "Woodpeckers," "Trillers," "Mimic-Like Repeaters," "Complex Vocalizations," "Hummers," and "Thrushes." Disc Three considers "Trillers Plus," "High-Pitchers," "Nuthatches," and "Miscellaneous," then presents a test of its own: a re-grouping of the birds and their songs by habitat, with no narrator telling us who they are.
I am still very far from scoring high on this test, and it may take years to be able to do so easily. But learning any language takes time, and for full assimilation this three-hour course needs to be combined with many, many hours spent listening to birds in the field. The ID sets can be seen as dictionaries of sorts, and Birding By Ear as an introduction, grammar, and exercise book as well. However, immersion learning is the only way to become truly comfortable with any living language. In this case, there are actually more languages and more local dialects than we could ever fully comprehend, but at least we can learn who's speaking or singing, and often even some of what they are saying.
Walton and Lawson recommend concentrating on one or a few groups at a time, rather than trying to take in all of these lessons in one fell swoop, and I believe this is good advice. However, it is certainly possible to listen to all three CDs start to finish, and to enjoy the experience. I don't think it hurts to listen to these discs over and over-something is bound to get through even in the confusing parts. The relatively easily-distinguished groups (like Owls, Name-Sayers, and Thrushes) are tastefully interspersed with more difficult groupings, conferring periodic, dependable boosts of confidence in the listener. And Walton and Lawson handle even the more troublesome groupings with never-say-die enthusiasm, as well as compassion for us novices and even a touch of humor. In one of my favorite segments, Walton introduces the warbling vireo: "Now to add to the confusion, let's listen to a fourth warbling songster... No, it isn't one of the finches... Let's face it, just as some species cannot be correctly identified in the field without knowing the song, there are others, such as the birds in this group, where a good pair of binoculars comes in handy."
Birding By Ear: Eastern and Central applies this same approach to birds in the Eastern and Central regions of the United States, and my impression after a sampling of the tracks is that it is just as valuable a resource. In fact, the two sets taken together have much to teach about comparative eastern and western ecologies. Many of the vocal groupings are similar, although the actual species involved are often different, and Walton and Lawson treat many of the same themes.
Whether you're a novice birder like me, a pre-novice, or an experienced birder, Birding By Ear is likely to open up new worlds, or at least to make them more navigable for you. And if you are in the undoubtedly small minority of birders who have fully "graduated" from this level of instruction, and know all of this already, please email me--I have some questions for you.
Chris Roth ([email protected]) listens to birds while weeding and seeding in Lost Valley's vegetable gardens.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life