Birding by Ear

…a guest article…

By Imbar Golt

This article is dedicated to all the people who love nature and the outdoors and who are looking for another way to enjoy birds.  Listening to and recognising calls and songs of birds outside your window or in the wild is a fun and educational activity that can bring people together and make an outing more interesting and pleasant.

Birds can be heard right outside your window, on a busy city street, or from a distance, when you are out in a rural area, a meadow or forest.  There can be just one species, calling away, which you can recognise very easily by its very typical and familiar call or song and there can be a huge chorus of birds from different species, which might make it hard to distinguish that one illusive call you are trying to pinpoint. Here you may find tips and techniques to help you do just that.

Why is it worth going birding by ear?

Spending time in nature, or in a lovely city-park is a wonderful way to pass some free time, meet new people and make friends, discover a whole world of creatures, most of them very vocal and active and you might find you can heal your soul and body on the way.

One pastime that people who are blind, or have any vision challenge can enjoy easily, is birding by ear.  These lovely creatures are found almost everywhere.  They communicate so much by their vocalisations, that it is easy to know which birds are around us.  I myself am a woman who is blind and started my birding journey at the age of thirteen, thirty-eight years ago. Thirty-eight years of listening to bird-songs and calls, learning to recognise many by ear and enjoy days upon days outside, in nature, with like-minded and like-hearted people, who love birds and have a common interest they share with me.  While they watch birds with their optical equipment and use field-guides and applications to find out which birds they can see, I listen and recognise the birds by their sounds.

These sounds, calls, songs and audible tail and wing-movements tell me a lot about what is around.

When I was still a young girl, I would listen for hours to tapes and then to CDs with many different bird species from different places.  I memorised many of their calls and songs, so I am now able to recognise the species I hear in the wild, and you can do that too.

Other people tell me what birds they can see and we match them to the calls I hear.  Some of the people with sight who I go birding with, also enjoy listening to the birds.

We have a lot of fun distinguishing between different species with similar calls, finding new arrivals during the migration seasons through their calls, locating birds at night or on a misty early morning outing, when birds are not easily found by sight, or distinguishing between sub-species through nuances in their calls.

First let us start with some tips for listening to birds from your home. If you cannot see the bird, it can help.

To start, you need to define the call or song. Does it sound like a small bird or a large one with volume and strength and depth in the call? Does it sound like a chirp, a whistle, a tweet, or any other sound you can attribute to it.

What is the season and time of day? Could the bird you have in mind be on the other side of the world right now and not come back until the next migration season?

There is a cute story of a blind friend who thought she heard an owl during the day. It was a laughing dove, but she thought it was like the hoot of an owl. That’s why it is important to pay attention to location, season, time of day etc.

After you have a species in mind or a type, or family in general, try to narrow it down by what you remember about the call of the bird or its song. Does it match? Does the number of tweets, buzzes etc. match the bird you were thinking of? Is it a warbling sound? Does it rise or fall? Does it get louder or softer? These are a few tips to get you started. I do recommend you listen to birds on any of the bird-call sights to learn some of the birds in your area. It would make it more fun to listen to them outside your window later.

You can also do the same from a car window, once you are very familiar with the common species on your routine journeys, it becomes an enjoyable way to travel and do some birding while you speed along a road.

Call identification by a blind birding guide

I have compiled this article to help people who are interested in bird-calls and songs both sighted and blind or who have a vision challenge, this guide is meant to help you identify birds by their songs and calls only.

Birds are usually easy to spot and identify visually.  However, what about on foggy days, birds hiding in thick undergrowth or in a bush, those that are just deep in the branches of a tree and can be heard clearly but not seen at all and what about birds migrating at night.  Here you have an advantage, if you learn the basics of how to identify and even count them by ear?  Later on, you can become very proficient in identifying the gender of the bird by its songs, migrating night-calls, intricacies of songs by similar sub-species and more.  You choose how deep you wish to dive into the world of birdsong and calls.

To set about listening to calls and honing your auditory identification skills, start by sitting or better yet standing at the location where the birds you want to identify are supposed to be.  It is better to stand, because you can get a more complete auditory scope.

In more general birding outings, first choose a spot with sparse trees or bushes, so there will not be dozens of species coming from all directions to confuse you.

After you have settled in, try to avoid unnecessary noise and movement.  Concentrate for about ten to fifteen minutes on listening to the ambient noises and to the birds around you.  Then, at your own pace, see if you can phase out the noises and concentrate on the bird calls.  Try to choose one that is the loudest, closest or the most unique or peculiar.  Then use your field guide to identify the bird visually if possible, so that you can know what bird made the sound. Get as close as possible to the sound source, so you will not confuse one sound with a different bird, which had not made it.  Please do not chase birds, or get too close to nests and young.

In some field-guides there are onomatopoeic words that represent sounds, but I personally have not found them very useful, maybe you will.  They seem to give sounds that I never heard any bird making, let alone a human.  They also give some words to put to a birdsong.  This does not help remember the name of the bird, in my opinion.

After you have identified the first bird, continue on to some more species, not too many at first, so that you will be able to remember and retain the memory of the distinctive call of each species.

You can also use CDs or tapes, or go on line for bird calls but remember that most may sound different in the field.  Recording distorts sounds, just like people’s voices change when you talk to them on the telephone.  Conditions may disturb or influence recording and make field-identification more difficult when you are actually out on a birding trip.  Things such as wind, echoes reverberating in canyons or coming back at you from rock formations or tall trees may influence the call or make it sound as if it’s coming from a different location.

When you have become more adept at recognizing different birds by their call, move on to song. This, of course, may sound very different from a call a bird makes. Some birds have very ‘poor’ singing abilities, so their songs are close in pitch and style or sound-pattern to their call. However, many birds strive to outdo any other males in their vicinity, so their songs will be very elaborate, as far as the natural abilities of the species go. See if you can count how many individual birds make the same call, or sing the same song.

Ways to make it easier for you

Some people say that all birds sound the same.  Even if they do not know the difference between a thrush and a blackbird, which are closely related song birds and have some similar characteristics, or a pigeon and a blackbird, which are of roughly the same size, you still know a number of things.

It is the males that mostly sing; A pigeon coos, while a blackbird’s call is sharp and short and its song is long and mellifluous;

The song of a blackbird is loud and occurs only in the breeding season and the months preceding it, etc. (Depending where you are in the world – Fatbirder)

A crow and a sunbird will sound very different and, of course, are very different in their size as well.  Sometimes, a large bird has a soft call and a very small bird has a very loud song.

There are many other ways to distinguish between calls and songs of different species.  It is logical that a small bird will sound weaker than a larger bird, which is usually the case.  A larger bird might have a lower sound, due to the way it projects the sounds it makes, or because of the build of the particular species, but this is not always the case, so you can use that as a secondary aid.  The area and types of vegetation will give you a clue as to what species can be found in a certain location and thus help eliminate confusing species that are not found in such areas at all, or that come only in spring when you are in the middle of winter, or do not call during the daytime, to give you just several examples.

To the more advanced listener comes the problem of how to differentiate between very close species.  What characteristics does each call have, how many clicks, or whistles etc. are normal for such and such a species.  All these techniques can be used when you do not or cannot see any birds.

What to do at night?  Owls and nightjars have distinct calls, but what about migrating birds.  Studies have shown that birds have different calls when they communicate within a flock at night than their usual daytime calls. You need to learn them by observations and, if possible, get help from sound-guides or videos online. Some owl species have similar sounding calls, so it’s good to compare them on line before you go out to try to recognise their calls in the field.

Distance is another factor that can confuse the listening birder.  The wind and echoes can distort a call and make it sound like another species.  Of course, you can try to get closer, but if that is impossible, try by eliminating the species that cannot be found at the time and place, identify the family or even order of the bird and then try to listen carefully and think what is the closest call that comes to your mind. This takes time and hours of being out there, listening and comparing. Sighted people have an advantage in that they can match the calls and songs they hear with actually seeing the birds, but sometimes you cannot and this method of identifying calls and songs only by hearing can come in very handy.

Counting birds

Naturally, a single bird sounds very different than a flock of a hundred. However, counting up to ten or twenty individuals could be tricky.  Divide the sky or ground where the flock is, into three or more areas, such as left, right and centre.  It might be difficult when there are no visual points of reference, like at night, but just as you hear a song in stereo, there is the right side or ear, the left and what is in between.  it’s a very primitive method, but it has been known to help the birders I’ve guided.  Think of it as dividing an audience in a hall into three, in order to sing a part-song. Just like the human audience, the birds can be all around you or right in front of you, so map the area of the calls with your ears and then divide it into segments.

Once you know the call of a certain bird very well, you will not confuse it with that of another.  Now, concentrate on listening to how many individuals make the same calls.  Listen closely to each one as you ‘scan’ the sky from left to right or vice versa with your ears.  Map the location in your mind of each individual you have heard and move on to the next one.  As time goes by this peculiar activity can become easier and faster.  You will know immediately if the flock is of ten, thirty or a hundred birds, just by being used to how flocks with different numbers of individuals are supposed to sound.  Of course, visual counting helps, but think that you are training your ears for the times you will not be able to see all or even any of the birds.  Once you count one species and get a result that is close to the actual number of birds counted visually, you might be able to count more than one species at the same time.

Maybe as you get more proficient at listening, you will, like me, be able to recognise a bird’s call or song while in a speeding vehicle.

Teaching identification to children

With young people who are interested in birding, the trick is to start with the most common birds.  They will be the ones easiest to identify.  Choose those birds that make the most vividly different calls.  A crow, a sparrow, a thrush, or an owl if possible.  Pigeons and gulls can work as well.  This is because of the short attention span of most children.  When they tell you, this is too boring or simple, but they still show interest in the hobby, you know they are ready for the more difficult species and might be willing to devote some more time and effort to identify them.

Of course, you can make it into a game or contest.  It is important to teach the young birding generation how to identify calls because it might help them later on their birding outings and even in their research, if they choose to pursue this hobby more professionally.