THE PRACTICE OF DEEP LISTENING
In general, the key to good listening begins with locating one bird, preferably when he is singing at his best early in the season or in the hour before sunrise. (Sunrise is the moment the sun peeks over the horizon, the time widely available in local newspapers or online at The Old Farmer’s Almanac Web site, www.almanac.com/rise. I use the word dawn loosely as the hour or so before sunrise.) As he sings, listen intently to each sound, comparing each song to the next. For each song, try to memorize the tone and rhythm in an attempt to grasp its essence.
It helps me to grasp the song if I envision a mental image of it that I can read from left to right—a crude musical score that depicts the ups and downs, the slow and fast parts, the tonal versus noisy parts, anything that varies over the length of the song. For a pure tone, I see a line left to right, the line being horizontal if the pitch is constant, rising or falling if the tone is slurred up or down. Noisy elements, such as a woodpecker drum, are vertical marks in my mental image. The song of a Swainson’s Thrush spirals upward, that of its relative, the Veery, downward, and I see the scribbled spiral in my mental image. The ultimate song, an eight-second masterpiece of a Winter Wren, might be a blur to human ears—except, say, for those slow, low notes in the fourth second, the high, fast notes in the sixth second, and the rapid trill at the end—so my eight-second-long mental scribble acknowledges those parts that I can hear. Maybe I jot down some notation of this image in a notebook; anything that helps to remember is good practice.
“Seeing is believing,” as the old adage goes, and “seeing” birdsongs like this improves our hearing and memory enormously. If these visual exercises are useful to you, I am confident you’ll find it enlightening to look at the “sonogram” for a song. A sonogram is simply a musical score for birdsong, showing a range of frequencies over time. In the “More Fun with Birdsong” section at the back of this book, you can learn more about sonograms and how to make them for free on your computer. You can then watch songs come to life visually as they dance across your computer’s screen.
As your listening skills develop, you’ll hear not only the loud birds nearby, but also a whole community of singers. Some songs will stand out clearly, but others will be far away and soft, and others will linger at the very edge of your hearing; learning to hear individual voices in the entire chorus is a valuable skill. Closing your eyes might help your concentration on the visual and aural images of the song, too.
It is these kinds of listening exercises that will become the basis for all that you hear, the basis for not only identifying the singing bird, but also for identifying with the individual. Because most males are territorial and tend to hold the same territory throughout a season, you can revisit the same bird at different times of the day or season, getting to know him better. You can also visit with other individuals of the same species, at either the same or more distant locations. You can learn to recognize each bird by its songs, perhaps recognizing a certain Swainson’s Thrush just back from Central America as the same male who sang near your home last year, for example, or knowing several yellowthroats who live in a local marsh near your home. One bird at a time, species by species, you will come to know them, just as you get to know people so well that you could never possibly confuse any of them with another.
Now for some specific examples: The song of the Chipping Sparrow is described as a chipping trill, rather dry, mechanical, and rapid, a single split-second phrase repeated ten to twenty or more times over two to three seconds. Visit almost any cemetery or tree-lined street during the daytime and listen to one of these sparrows. He most likely sings song after song from high in a tree at a leisurely rate of about four songs per minute, each song essentially identical except for slight variations in length, with a brief phrase simply repeated more times in some songs than in others. Stand in his territory an hour before sunrise, however, and you’ll come to know another side of him; now he sings from the ground, sputtering short songs consisting of just a few phrases, as many as sixty such sputters per minute.
As you listen to your chosen Chipping Sparrow, most likely you’ll also hear others on neighboring territories. Walk over to each in turn, savoring the quality of their songs, comparing the song of each Chipping Sparrow with the songs of others that you can hear in the distance. Hear how different each individual is from the others, how some have hard, dry trills but others are far more tonal, more musical. During the daytime, each male sings from some high perch in his own territory, but at dawn they often gather, three or four of them sputtering their songs within just a few yards of one another on the ground or from a gravestone in a quiet cemetery. And as you compare the songs of different Chipping Sparrows, realize that about one out of ten neighbors whose songs you compare will sound identical. What you’re hearing is something special about Chipping Sparrows, as most likely you’re hearing a yearling who has copied precisely the songs of an older neighbor. Get to know Chipping Sparrows like this and you’ll never mistake these friends for anyone else.
Even though males of many songbird species use their song-learning ability to develop large repertoires of different songs, males of many other species, like the Chipping Sparrow, have a single song that they repeat over and over. Other species with a single song included in this book are the Wrentit, Common Yellowthroat, White-crowned Sparrow, and Lazuli Bunting. The simple listening exercise described for the Chipping Sparrow will enable you to hear how songs of these other species vary among individuals, too, and at different times of the day and from place to place. Perhaps it’s no surprise that each of these species differs from the others in so many ways, not just in the quality of the songs that enables us to identify them by species, and that is the fun of getting to know each.
Because most males are territorial and tend to hold the same territory throughout a season, you can revisit the same bird at different times of the day or season.
Try your careful listening method on many other songbirds and you’ll hear that eventually, after ten or twenty or even a hundred songs, the male in each species switches to an entirely different song. An Oak or Juniper Titmouse, for example, sings a simple song over and over. Perhaps you’ll hear peto peto peto, just three two-syllable phrases repeated again and again. Stick with him for ten or twenty minutes, and eventually he’ll switch to a distinctly different song perhaps, one with a single-syllable phrase that he delivers more slowly. While you’re waiting for him to change his tune, listen to what the other titmice are doing in the background. Most likely, they’re all singing the same song, and after one of them switches, the others will follow. In this book, other species in which singers repeat a given song many times before switching to another—what scientists call singing with “eventual variety”—are the Hutton’s Vireo, Mountain Chickadee, Bewick’s Wren, Spotted Towhee, Song Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, and Western Meadowlark.
A male with a repertoire of different songs can also sing with “immediate variety,” as he pours out everything he knows in one continuous stream, each song different from the one before and the one to follow. Mockingbirds and thrashers are renowned for such impressive singing. Birds who sing in this way often sing rapidly, filling the air with song, as if having a large repertoire means they need to flaunt it all at once. Many of my favorite songbirds sing in this way, including Marsh Wrens, Hermit and Swainson’s Thrushes, American Robins, and western Fox Sparrows.
With any singer who has a repertoire of different songs, I enjoy getting to know him as best I can. If a male sings with eventual variety, I listen for him to switch to a new song, maybe counting songs or minutes from one switch to the next; I visit with him during the day but especially before sunrise, as I’m intrigued by how excitedly he sings and how rapidly he moves through his repertoire in the predawn hour. If a male sings with immediate variety, I especially enjoy listening for a particular song that I think is easily distinguished from his other songs, a song that I am convinced I will recognize when I hear it again. With a mockingbird, for example, I pick that distinctive song and then hold on as he races through his repertoire; perhaps I’ll just listen for that unique song again, but often I’ll time him or count the number of other songs he sings before he returns to my chosen song. Because a mockingbird tends to tell most everything he knows before repeating himself, this exercise gives me a rough idea of not only how long it takes him to get through his repertoire but also how many different songs he commonly uses.
Birds who sing in this way often sing rapidly, filling the air with song, as if having a large repertoire means they need to flaunt it all at once.
A shorthand notation is often useful to represent these different styles of singing. If a different letter is used to represent each of the different songs that a male can sing, then repeating a single song over and over is A A A . . ., singing with eventual variety is A A A . . . B B B . . ., and singing with immediate variety is A B C D E . . . .
What I find so fascinating about listening to birds with repertoires is how expressive they can be with their songs. Sometimes a bird sings with eventual variety, sometimes immediate variety, and sometimes in between (for instance A B C A B C D E F D E F . . .). Before sunrise, for example, a Spotted Towhee often sings with immediate variety, alternating among two or three songs in his repertoire, but as sunrise approaches, he relaxes into eventual variety, repeating one of those songs several times before switching to another. These towhees illustrate how males of many species sing more intensely before sunrise and how singing is more relaxed later in the day (recall how those Chipping Sparrows sputter on the ground at dawn but sing more leisurely up in the tree later in the day).
And there’s so much more! Get to know many of the warblers, for example, and you’ll realize that males have two different kinds of songs that they sing, one that is used in arguments with other males and one that is used largely to address females. By just knowing which song he sings, you can tell exactly what is on his mind. Join a Yellow Warbler in the hour before sunrise and you’ll hear him arguing with males; around sunrise, you’ll hear all of the males contagiously switch to songs that seem designed more to directly impress the females.
Yes, of course, there’s far more, and that’s the fun of birdsong. These birds pour out their minds as they sing, and with the accounts throughout this book you can learn how to listen. For many of even the most common species, however, you may be surprised to learn that we know so little, and you will be on your own for what listening games you can use to learn about those species. With some practice, I’m confident you’ll rise to the challenge.
By just knowing which song he sings, you can tell exactly what is on his mind.