“I still have trouble with Sedge Wren’s call,” said Don, to me, after announcing that I’d heard two of the skulkiferous little wraiths that morning. They were calling, at dawn, in the tangle of reeds where I’d put them to bed the evening before.
“You just haven't heard enough of them,” I said; I knew, and Don knew this too. Fact is Don’s ears are much better than mine. Fact is, distinguishing the call notes of birds is more art than science and it is more a practiced art than a natural born talent.
The fact is you learn, over time, to hear, apprehend, dissect, codify, catalogue, and store, for later reference, the different call notes of birds.
The difference between the low, muttered “chuh” of say, Marsh Wren and the higher, drier, “cheh” of Sedge Wren.
But once you get it: Once you learn how to decode the deceptively simple utterances that unlock the secret of an unseen bird’s identity, the Universe expands exponentially.
It took me a long, long time to appreciate this. It’s taken much, much longer for me to gain a tympanic toehold in this subtlest world of sound.
I had everything working against me when I was starting to bird. First, I was mostly doing it alone. There was nobody to tell me to “listen to the birdy.” There was nobody at my side to impress me by saying: “Shhh. Hear that? There! That dry little snit. Sedge Wren for sure!”
Besides it was called “bird watching,” right? I mean if listening was so important they would have called it “bird listening.” Listening to birds when you could watch them was about as silly as listening to the radio when you could watch TV.
That’s the way I rationalize it, anyway.
I also had great eyes. By the time I got to fourth grade, and class went down to the nurses office to have our eyes tested, the nurse would roll her eyes when I got in the chair, say: “Oh, here we go,” and just direct me to read the bottom line on the chart.
Which I unfailingly did.
My ears? Well, let’s just say there were a few holes in what might be called the “normal range.”
Or let me put it another way: It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I discovered that people can actually hear the lyrics to a song. I mean, I knew that they were based on words: I just didn’t know you were supposed to decipher them.
Back to birds.
I started really paying attention to bird vocalizations when I was in my twenties. I’d finally met real birders and I was both impressed (and diminished) by what they could do with their ears. One of my early birding buddies was Pete Bacinski—the man with the golden ears. Pete could pin a name to any rock and roll tune cut before 1962 in three notes or less. He was also an ace when it came to bird song.
I was also privileged enough to bird next to Roger Tory Peterson, a man whose ears were three generations ahead of his time. I can remember driving through the Pine Barrens on that first World Series of Birding en route to Brigantine. The windows were open. Conversations within the car had to be conducted at levels approaching a shout.
Suddenly Roger said: “Mourning Warbler.”
We stopped the car. Backed up about a quarter mile. Sure enough. Back in the forest was a Mourning Warbler.
It’s not a hard song to hear or even remember. It’s a favorite dub in on lawn care commercials. Heck you’ve heard it a hundred times.
It is hard to hear when your ears are full of wind and conversation.
But an appreciation for the subtleties of bird sounds didn’t find me until I spent time with Michael O’Brien—the master of flight calls. I marveled at the way he dissected sounds. How some calls rose and some fell. How some ended abruptly and others ended in a breathy fizzle. How some were sharp; others flat. And I found myself...
Listening for the first time in my life. Not just hearing. Listening. And discovering, over time, that once you got a notion of what was high and what was flat and what calls were rising or broken or muttered that these served as little reference points.
Once, say, you got the call of (Taiga) Fox Sparrow down—a loud, rich, dry chip—then when you heard Sedge Wren (for instance) you might note that it had the dry quality of Fox Sparrow but it was not as loud or rich.
Or that Carolina Wren has a twitter call that sounds a bit like the rippling flight call of Snow Bunting. So that if you hear a Carolina Wren calling from somewhere overhead...
Because in the history of the world nobody has ever squinted into the sky and seen a Carolina Wren then.
...then it must be Snow Bunting.
So all this makes me a really good birder? No. But it makes me a better birder. And it’s proven to me that even a birder with really lousy hearing can still discern subtle differences. And it’s also gotten me the occasional Sedge Wren on a Christmas Bird Count.
Chuh versus cheh. Not much difference to deal with. Just the difference between one species and another.