Birds Make Sound

When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place

2024-06-21T00:00:00Z

This short essay by Ed Yong is a great read. It feels accurate and totally relatable for the already bird-obsessed while also speaking to a general audience who isn't already steeped in the idiosyncrasies of birding.

"These recent years have taught me that I’m less when I’m not actively looking after myself, that I have value to my world and my community beyond ceaseless production and that pursuits like birding that foster joy, wonder and connection to place are not sidebars to a fulfilled life but their essence."

Recently I've been catching myself not birding for long stretches, especially when it is so hot in Phoenix, because I have "more important" things to do. I forget that even a short trip to cooler climes, seeing a couple Wild Turkeys and Red-faced Warblers can help me recharge, reframe, and de-stress in a profound way.

"When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place" by Ed Yong.

Birds, Music, Cognition

2024-03-14T00:00:00Z

(Originally posted on parkerdavis.dev)

On Sunday I came across two fascinating and coincidentally convergent things that I'll share with you: a paper on songbird sound cognition that gives us a hint at just how differently European Starlings hear the world than humans, and a coding talk that was really all about bird song, music, and just-intonation.

Songbirds use spectral shape, not pitch, for sound pattern recognition

You can find the paper here and the supporting materials here. The "Significance" section gives a succinct summary:

"Past work characterizes songbirds as having a strong bias to rely on absolute pitch for the recognition of tone sequences. In a series of behavioral experiments, we find that the human percepts of both pitch and timbre are poor descriptions of the perceptual cues used by birds for melody recognition. We suggest instead that auditory sequence recognition in some species reflects more direct perception of acoustic spectral shape. Signals that preserve this shape, even in the absence of pitch, allow for generalization of learned patterns." (Bregman, et al., 2016)

The study design was essentially asking starlings to determine whether a sequence of musical sounds was ascending or descending in pitch. They would get a treat if they chose the correct "response port" (Fig 1 A).

The birds would have a training session on certain musical sequences, then afterwards would be tested on variations of the musical sequences. If the birds recognized the new sequences as being similar to the training sequences, they should choose the correct response port more quickly and reliably.

Transposition

Here is one of the musical sequences the starlings were trained on where the notes are ascending a whole-tone scale, with different timbres for each note (synesthetically shown in Fig 1 B above: first a blue oboe, then a red choir "aah", a green muted trumpet, then a purple synthesizer):

Here is a test sequence with the same relative changes in pitch and timbre but transposed down four semitones:

❌

When tested with variations like these that preserve melody and timbre but are transposed up or down, the starlings performed poorly on the tests.

The fact that the starlings did not recognize the transposed melody seems to support bird cognition based on absolute pitch as was previously thought. A song sung in a different key is perceived as a completely different song to the starlings. Surprising!

Timbre

Timbre (pronounced "tamber") is the perceived tone quality of a note. Most sounds you hear are a combination of many different frequencies or overtones. Our brain combines all of the overtones into a single sound with a particular quality. We might call the timbre "bright" or "dark" or "nasal" or "pure".

For example, when someone blasts a trumpet, we hear it as bright because the amplitudes of the overtones are strong relative to the fundamental frequency. When a trumpet plays with a mute, it can sound "nasal" because the fundamental frequency is muted so much that the overtones are louder than the base frequency. A flute is relatively "pure" because the overtones are muted compared to the fundamental tone.

Whatever the timbre might be, we hear all of these overtones as related, so much so that it is difficult for us to pick out the individual parts of the sound. It just sounds like a single sound with a certain "color" to it, a.k.a. timbre.

When the researchers changed the timbre but preserved the fundamental frequencies of the melody (same melody, different instrument), starlings were again unable to recognize the melodies and performed poorly on the tests.

Original trained sequence:

Same pitches, different timbre (all piano):

❌

This is unexpected... to our ears these sequences are very similar. The base frequencies must not be the primary cognitive anchor for the birds. Again from the "Significance" section:

"...human percepts of both pitch and timbre are poor descriptions of the perceptual cues used by birds for melody recognition." (Bregman, et al., 2016)

Hmm!

Spectral shape

Here we go. Spectral shape. I think the easiest way to think about spectral shape is by looking at a spectrogram.

Visually you can see that each sound has a particular shape. You can interpret the shapes in relation to how we hear it: the thin dark horizontal lines are more "tone-like" and the rougher blurry looking sounds are more "noisy", etc.

Here is what it sounds like with more of the spectral shape preserved and the tonal frequencies obscured using a filtering tool called a noise vocoder:

Original trained sequence:

Noise vocoded sequence with periodic frequencies removed:

✅

As the starling hears it, this apparently sounds the most similar! They performed well on these tests.

While these sound very different to our ears, if you squint at the spectrograms for these sounds, it starts to make more sense.

Moving from left to right in each spectrogram, visually the first note looks like a short building, then a taller building, shorter building, and then the tallest building. The training stimuli have stronger lines because they are more tonal, while the noise vocoded stimuli are visually more fuzzy and therefore noisy – but the overall spectral shape and pattern of the "buildings" is similar.

One interpretation of these results is that the percepts of both pitch and timbre provide relatively poor descriptions of the perceptual cues available to starlings. We reasoned instead that starlings may rely on a perception of each tone based on its absolute spectral envelope (i.e., the overall pattern of spectral amplitudes across particular frequency bands) rather than abstracted features derived from the fundamental frequency (AP) or on the relative power in the harmonics (timbre). (Bregman, et al., 2016)

Every one of these results is surprising and unintuitive to me. Its hard to imagine how they must be hearing things, but maybe it is not as strange as it seems...

Bird song is not music?

At the end of the paper, there is a tantalizing suggestion:

In humans, speech recognition is famously robust to the pitch-degrading manipulations introduced by noise vocoders (43), whereas similar manipulations have severe impacts on music perception (44). Our observation that birds rely on spectral shape features to recognize sound sequences suggests a similarity to human speech recognition. (Bregman, et al., 2016)

If you run music through a noise vocoder, most people would have a hard time picking out the tune or even recognizing it as music. We are able to understand speech when similarly manipulated though. When someone whispers to you, it is sort of like running their normal speaking voice through a noise vocoder – certain aspects of the spectral shape are preserved and we're still able to pick out the vowels and consonants. We're able to understand what is being said.

These results suggest bird song cognition may be neurologically more closely related to our own speech cognition than music cognition. Bird "song" may be more like speaking than singing.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Also, bird song is music

Whatever birds' intents and experience may be, it doesn't mean we can't listen to bird song as music. I came across this talk from Chris Ford about code, bird song, and music, specifically just-intonation. It even included off-hand references to Steve Reich. Obviously it resonated with me.

It was given at a tech conference and has live coding throughout, but at its heart its about music and bird sound. Depending on your mood and disposition, there is a very funny/transcendent musical jam at the end. I suggest you check it out.

Birds are one of the more sonically participatory groups of animals, a large part of why I find them so fascinating. Birds make sound. It seems their experience of sound is wildly different than our own though.

How does the starling hear the world?

Slow Doves (and updates)

2023-03-22T00:00:00Z

Spring has sprung in Phoenix so I wanted to share a quick recording to mark the occasion, but first, a few updates on some things I've been working on the past few months.

RainCrow

RainCrow is humming along. If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about or what that even is, I did a Q&A with Jason Crotty of 10,000 Birds that should clear things up. You might be saying, yes this sounds great but I want it to be in French and Spanish. Great news! Marie-Andreée Boucher-Beaulieu, an Ontario birder/developer, helped add internationalization and translated RainCrow into French while JC Paniagua from Spain contributed the Spanish translation. Many thanks to them! If you want to translate RainCrow into another language, email me. RainCrow across the globe!

Rare Bird Alert

In other web development news, I made a Rare Bird Alert web app that builds on eBird’s API to allow you to peruse notable eBird sightings at a glance. Parker, why? eBird already does this. Yes, but not very efficiently, at least not in counties like Maricopa where birds flagged as "rare" are constant and plentiful. My app groups sightings by species or location, allowing you to get a general overview, then view details for the birds you're interested in. No more endless scrollingscrolling through the morning RBA emails. Bonus, it looks good, has a responsive dark mode for late night bird browsing, and I learned a lot making it.

Birds making sound!

As I mentioned, spring has certainly sprung around these parts. Wildflowers are going off and the birds have a lot to say. A few days ago I recorded some binaural audio that capture a bit of the boisterousness.

The recording doesn’t capture an “untouched” “pristine” “natural” soundscape, it sounds like Phoenix – but in some ways an older, less developed Phoenix. I was in the Chandler Heights neighborhood doing a CAP-LTER point count, surrounded by homes, a dirt lot, and a citrus orchard across the street. The general lack of traffic, airplanes, and (God help me) leaf blowers, evokes a time when the suburbs of Phoenix were separate towns and orchards and farms mixed with homes, before the great sprawling homogenization into sterile tan subdivisions.

There’s decent diversity in these three minutes. Gambel’s Quail, Eurasian Collared-Dove, Inca Dove, Mourning Dove, Gila Woodpecker, Verdin, Curve-billed Thrasher, Northern Mockingbird, House Finch, Lesser Goldfinch, Abert’s Towhee, Brown-headed Cowbird, Great-tailed Grackle, and Orange-crowned Warbler are all heard from. I especially love the sounds of the Inca Doves. Their “no hope” song evokes pleasant memories of summer visits to friend's houses as a child. Dig out your earphones (for the full binaural experience) and enjoy.

Recorded with Sennheiser AMBEO Smart Headset

Postlude: Chopped and Screwed

Sometimes my computer will unexpectedly play sounds at the wrong bit rate, slowing them down. This happened while I was preparing this post and I couldn’t resist sharing. Actually, I'm surprised I haven't shared any slowed down recordings yet because they are one of my favorite things. The familiar becomes strange and otherworldly. It can help tap into that mode of listening where every sound is a tactile and fascinating delight. Also, I like to imagine it gets us closer to hearing bird sounds as the birds hear them, more able to hear the minute details and intricacies. Keep an ear out for the Eurasian Collared-Dove wheezes around the 3:17 mark, they are impressive and hilarious.

If you want more slow birds in your life, Brad Balliett has a great twitter account dedicated to slow motion videos of birds. You’re welcome.

Life Bird #500

2022-11-11T00:00:00Z

On November 4th, 2022, I, Parker Davis, saw my 500th life bird .

Well, sort of. If you asked an ABA Recording Rules and Interpretations purist, they’d tell you I’m somewhere around 496, due to rules about how long it takes feral populations of exotic birds to become established and therefore "countable" (Rosy-faced Lovebirds and Monk Parakeets in Phoenix count, but Yellow-collared Lovebirds and Nanday Parakeets do not, etc. – these rules are useful for Big Year competitions but don't mean much for my general purpose life list). On the other hand, my eBird life list currently shows 503 species due to temporary "Domestic type" taxa life list inflation. There is a surprising amount of gray area when you get down to it. If you ask me though, I just saw my 500th life bird.

Last Thursday afternoon, Tommy DeBardeleben posted in the AZ Rare Bird group chat that he found a Kentucky Warbler at the Jewel of the Creek Preserve. It had been stormy with rain and hail coming and going throughout the day but by afternoon it was clearing up. The resulting cool temperatures and sky full of dramatic clouds were beckoning me outside. A sunset bird chase is rarely successful in my experience but Nell and I had never been to the Jewel of the Creek preserve so we decided, hell, let’s go!

Jewel of the Creek is a well-named section of Cave Creek with spectacular views of huge cottonwoods surrounded by lush Sonoran desert. We explored the preserve as the sun set, taking in the views and the smell of wet dirt and creosote. We were treated to the company of some nice birds and nice local birders, but the temperatures were dropping quickly and the birds settling in for the night. Of course we would have preferred to see the Kentucky Warbler, but as we drove home in the dark we had no regrets.

Photo: Nell Smith

The next morning we decided we ought to try again. The scenery was still spectacular, the weather sunny and cool, our minds fresh and caffeinated. Taking our time birding along the creek, we lingered in patches of morning sun. Dara, a local birder, caught us basking and shared that she, along with most of the group from the night before, had just seen the bird up the trail.

We set off with a bit more urgency. We heard a series of loud down-slurred calls in the distance that sounded an awful lot like the Kentucky Warbler recordings we had listened to in preparation. Once we were about where we'd heard the calls we stopped, looked, and listened. Anticipation grew with each passing Ruby-crowned Kinglet and rustling leaf. Eventually a blob of yellow and olive emerged, black-masked, foraging in the undergrowth.

Photo: Nell Smith

We stood in the shade of the willows and cottonwoods, watching the bird work its way through the tangles and brush. A life bird for me and a state bird for Nell, we were both treated to great looks (and adequate photos) as it foraged in and out of view. It even obliged to give a few calls while my recorder was running. Sorry, your browser does not support the HTML audio element

Recorded with Sony A10 (internal microphones)

The number on a birder's life list is a poor measure of their bird knowledge or observational skills. I find life lists most useful for reflecting on the many experiences had while adding birds to it. With each bird an associated memory, a landmark in space and time. I'm not the same person as I was at bird #400 (Caspian Tern, 2018, California trip with Nell, on my way to play a solo show in San Francisco) or bird #300 (Hermit Warbler, 2017, birding Mingus Mountain with my mom).

No matter what number is assigned to it, seeing a new bird is worth celebrating. After hiking the long loop back to the car, we stopped in town for celebratory provisions. A tradition among some birders is to eat “Lifer Pie”. Nell and I opted for a Lifer chicken parmesan sandwich instead.

It was good.

How to use Anki to learn bird sounds

2022-10-25T00:00:00Z

Maybe you're new to birding or traveling somewhere with unfamiliar birds. Maybe you have a season of point counts coming up. Maybe you're just tired of all your ear birder pals finding all the birds before you do.

You've just gotta learn those bird sounds.

As I've written before, there are many resources available to learn bird vocalizations. When you want to test yourself using your own sound files, however, it seems the options are limited. Shuffling mp3s works but I've always found the experience wanting and haven't had much lasting success.

Enter Anki. Anki is free flashcard software that is built around the concept of spaced repetition. Basically, as you keep working with it, you'll be tested more often on things you are less confident about instead of endlessly confirming things that you do. Efficiency!

For our purposes, one of the best features of Anki is the ability to embed media into your flash cards. The "front" of the card can be an audio file (or photo or video) while the "back" can be the name of the bird. You can create "decks" of specific species you want to study.

My initial excitement at the discovery of Anki was tempered by the tedious process of having to create an individual flashcard for every sound you want to include in your deck. To study a group of four species, each with 5 sounds, would mean manually creating 20 individual cards. And if you have to study 100 species . . .🫠

...BUT! I recently found out the Anki community has created numerous "add-ons" that add functionality to Anki. The Media Import add-on allows you to automatically create a deck of flashcards from a folder of sound files. By default it creates a card for each sound file with audio on the front and the file name on the back, so as long as your sound files have the bird's name in the title, you're good to go!

Anki is popular for language learning, med/law school, and other memorization-intensive activities, but I've never heard of birders using it for learning bird sounds. The interface doesn't wow you and it takes a bit of setting up (hence this walk-through), but once you start using it to study sounds it has an uncluttered look and feel with a nice keyboard interface. There are also mobile versions of the app with the ability to sync your data across devices.

With a winning combination of flexibility and efficiency, birders of any experience level would benefit from having Anki in their toolbox.

So lets get to it!

How to install Anki and batch import sound files

Installing Anki

First go to https://apps.ankiweb.net/ and click on the big blue download button.

This scoots you down to where you choose your operating system and start the actual download.

Installation will vary by operating system but on Mac you just drag the app into your applications folder.

When you open Anki, it will look something like this:

Installing Media Import Add-on

Now we need to install the Media Import Add-on which can be found here. After perusing the introduction, scroll down to the Download section and copy the given download code.

Update from 2025: there is now Media Import 2 for more recent versions of Anki

In Anki, go to the Tools menu → Add-ons → Get Add-ons... paste in the code and click OK.

After it installs you'll need to close and reopen Anki for the add-on to be enabled.

Gathering Sound Files

You can use whatever sound files you want – that's the beauty! Personally, I like using the Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds as a starting point which you can then supplement with sounds from Xeno-Canto and your own personal stash.

Once you have the sound files you want to study, copy them into a folder on your computer.

Batch import files to create a study deck

Go to the Tools menu in Anki, click on the newly added Media Import...

For Media directory click on browse and select the folder with your sound files. There are some options you can explore but I use the default Basic note type with Media on the front and File Name on the back. Click OK to create the new deck.

A message pops up letting you know it created a new deck. The deck will be named MediaImport on the Anki home screen. You can rename the deck by clicking the cog button to the right of the name, then rename.

Also in the cog button, you should select Options and select Random for Insertion Order.

Anki basics

Now you are ready to study some bird sounds!

From the home screen, click on the name of the deck you want to study, then click the Study Now button.

It should start playing a random sound. Once you think you know what it is, press space bar to show the back of the card which will be the sound file name.

After you reveal the answer there are four buttons to indicate your confidence for that sound. There are times above each button indicating how long before Anki will test you on the sound again. You can click them or use your keyboard to press 1-4 for Again, Hard, Good, and Easy. Then on to the next sound!

Onward

You can create as many decks as you want with any variation of sounds you can dream up, whether it be groups of similar sounding calls, overviews of specific habitats, or loudest shriekers only.

To enhance the Anki card experience you could install the Batch Editing add-on to quickly add images and spectrograms to your audio cards. You could use Anki to test yourself on visual identification e.g. import a set of photos of hawks in flight.

Anki is a good free tool with a lot of flexibility. That being said, for the task of learning bird sounds there is still room for improvement and I've got project ideas simmering that would optimize learning bird sounds even more but... I'll leave that for another post.

Let me know your favorite ways to learn bird sounds → parker@birdsmakesound.com

RainCrow

2022-09-17T00:00:00Z

Hello again.

A lot has happened since I last posted here. Also, here is different than when I last posted here. Long story short, I've been learning to code and I rebuilt this website. Welcome!

I also made a web app called RainCrow. It automatically retrieves historical weather observations for eBird checklists. After tinkering with it on and off for a few months, I recently shared it with the eBird community and I've gotten a lot of good feedback. And a lot of users. It was almost immediately hitting the limit of 1000 free weather API requests a day. It feels good to put something out there that people find useful. If you're interested in the more technical aspects of creating RainCrow you can read about it over here (I made that website too!).

You may be asking: Why would I make an app that gathers weather observations for eBird checklists?

Mostly for fun. I like putting weather observations in my checklists and appreciate when others do too. Some of the best birding outings are out of cellphone coverage so you can't just open your weather app to get the temperature. I wanted to be able to pull the weather stats after returning from the field.

Weather observations help fill out the picture that a checklist conjures. I like knowing about the blistering heat or dank damp that the people and birds experienced during a checklist. To paraphrase Ted Floyd, every checklist is an opportunity for storytelling.

The weather observations have practical value as well; it can help you suss out the reasons for peculiar abundance or absence of species.

A personal example to demonstrate: In late February 2020, I was visiting Nell in Laramie, WY. She was busy with grad school so I had plenty of time to bird, peruse eBird data, and try to build up my Albany county list. I noticed that Lapland Longspurs had a bump in local detections around that time of year so I figured I'd look through previous eBird records to see where people had found them.

Of particular interest was a 2017 observation at Beef Unit. 100 Lapland Longspurs(!), 750 Horned Larks and a Golden Eagle at a place called Beef Unit? Obviously I had to check this spot out.

Beef Unit was...not as exciting as I had hoped. I don't remember much; there were some buildings, barns and farm equipment. There may have been some cows but there weren't a memorable amount of cows. At the time of our visit this University of Wyoming facility appeared udderly (sorry) lacking in activity – bird, bovine, or otherwise. Our checklist over the course of 25 minutes was as follows:
3 Rock Pigeon, 2 Common Raven, 1 Horned Lark, 6 House Sparrows. It was hard to reconcile how these two lists could be so wildly different, same location, both in the final weeks of February. What happened on February 25, 2017 at Beef Unit?

Turns out there was a snowstorm.

Asking around, we found out from the local keepers of bird knowledge (aka friendly birders) that during and after snowstorms were the best times to look for Lapland Longspurs. Birds generally have high metabolisms and when it is cold and windy, especialy so. A <1oz bird needs to replenish its energy stores as their metabolism goes into furnace mode so when the grasslands surrounding Laramie are covered in snow, the seed eaters must go searching. Their numbers concentrate in areas with bare ground which, due to heat retention, snow plows, and salt, is often near human habitation. The stark difference between our experience of Beef Unit and the 2017 checklist made sense once we knew the context.

After figuring out the weather piece of the puzzle, there was, lucky us, a big snowstorm rolling in on the last day of my visit to Laramie. In the afternoon when the storm was kicking into high gear, Nell and I idled in low, heater on, cruising a dirt road on the north edge of town. Peering out the car windows we found a flock of Horned Larks and picked through them until we found a bird that was not like the others.

Lapland Longspur (front) and Horned Lark (back) foraging in the blustery snow.

The contextual weather information helped us prioritize when and where to search for Lapland Longspurs and resulted in seeing a new Life Bird for both of us. Hooray!

If we had tried to piece it together without the help of the local birding community, looking up historical weather records for eBird checklists would have been a cumbersome process. Well hey, now there is RainCrow which makes it super simple. It also makes adding these observations to your own checklists easy.

❄️
Light snow - snow
Temperature: 22°F
Wind: Gentle breeze
Wind Direction: E-NE
Cloud Cover: 98-100
Humidity: 81-83
Sunrise: 6:36am
Sunset: 5:53pm
Weather generated by RainCrow

RainCrow weather return for our checklist

You can see (and hear) from the video that the wind was a little stronger than a "Gentle breeze". When you paste the RainCrow results in your checklists they're easy to tweak. While weather APIs feel like magic, you have to treat the returned weather data with a bit of caution. They can't retrieve the exact local weather conditions everywhere at all times. Recording your own coarse on-the-ground weather observations is still valuable but when you need a backup, RainCrow is there for you.

Thanks for checking back in! You can sign up for email updates below. There is no comment section anymore – send me an email instead, I'd love to hear from you →
parker@birdsmakesound.com

The Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds

2020-12-07T00:00:00Z

I got an exciting email from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology last week. They are using 19 of my bird recordings for an updated version of their Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds: United States and Canada as well as a future update of the Merlin app. Over the past couple years I’ve uploaded over 400 recordings to eBird so 19 may not seem like much but with over 450,000 bird recordings from the United States and Canada in the Macaulay Library, the fact that 19 of my recordings capture something unique or especially clearly is satisfying.

I know, in an abstract way, when I upload recordings to eBird I am contributing to science and bird knowledge but it can often feel like no one is actually listening to these recordings. It is a library archive after all, not a social media sharing platform, so it can take years before the value of certain recordings are realized and you can't always predict how they'll be put to use. Having the space to share recordings where they have potential to contribute to bird knowledge, appreciation, and conservation is a big motivator for me so for my recordings to be handpicked and recognized as having value in this small way is rad.

So check out the updated digital audio guide The Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds: United States and Canada and check for your pal Parker’s name in the Merlin app audio credits sometime next year. The eBird challenge of the month for December is to upload 50 audio recordings or photos so get out those microphones and contribute to SCIENCE.

In the spirit of thankfulness, here is a recording of displaying Hooded Mergansers from Thanksgiving last week. It is not featured in any digital guides but is a treat to listen to. It also happens to be the first audio recording in the Macaulay Library of Hooded Mergansers in Arizona — so that's cool too.

Eared Quetzal Trip Report

2020-11-03T00:00:00Z

You probably don’t need me to tell you that today (November 3rd, 2020) is Election Day. If you haven’t already, please go vote. If you have, it might be healthy to think about something else for a bit. To this end I offer a humble trip report from early October when Nell and I headed to southeast Arizona.

The primary target of our trip was a pair of famed Eared Quetzals that had been reported since June this summer. Nell and I were hesitant to chase these birds for months because they’re the kind of birds that draw crowds and, for some reason, we’re uncomfortable with crowds this year. However, the birds persisted through summer and fall, sometimes disappearing only to be re-found in nearby canyons. With the crowds thinning by early October we could almost hear the quetzals squealing to us. Finally, a series of coincident reports of other incredible birds came through the birding grapevine, coalescing into a perfect itinerary for a quick tour of southeast Arizona.

Java with the Jacana

We set off from Phoenix to Tucson with our food, water, camping gear and fresh coffee. Even before reaching Tucson, we had an appointment with a bird. Taking the Ina Road exit on the north edge of the city, we drove past hotels, gas stations, and expansive strip malls that define the sprawling American suburban experience until we got to where the road passes over the Santa Rita River. On the pedestrian path along the roaring four-lane bridge, we had a clear vantage point over the modest slow-flowing river. Truthfully there is nothing modest about any Arizona river with water. With dams, drought, and many sipping straws throughout the western watersheds there are only a few rivers defiantly flowing on. Looking down at the river, from just a stone's throw away, we had an unobstructed view of an adult Northern Jacana.

Northern Jacana – photo: Nell Smith

With extremely long toes, the Northern Jacana can walk on top of floating vegetation and pick off otherwise hard to reach aquatic insects. Rails and other marsh birds are usually notoriously hard to see, skulking quietly in inaccessible marsh reeds. This jacana, however, rarely found north of the border, was doing its thing in plain view from the bustling suburban pedestrian bridge. Our first "life bird" of the day.

Fizzy with the Phalarope, Reuben with the Ruff

After picking up some to-go sandwiches in Tucson, we continued our tour of Interstate 10. Next up was Cochise Lake in Wilcox, Arizona. As we scanned through hundreds of ducks, shorebirds, and a few dozen flyover Sandhill Cranes, we were visited by an uncharacteristically tame immature Greater Roadrunner. While the focus of our trip was skewed towards the rare and unusual, that doesn't mean we didn't savor some quality time with this prehistoric ground-dwelling desert cuckoo.

Greater Roadrunner – photo: Nell Smith

Returning to the search, we found one of our target birds: a type of phalarope, peculiar shorebirds whose females flaunt the flashier plumage and after laying their eggs leave the males to tend to the young. Very rarely seen away from the coast, our so-called Red Phalarope was in its nondescript non-red non-breeding plumage. Still cause for celebration, Nell and I cracked open a couple seltzers and continued to scan the lake.

(not so) Red Pharalope

In the blazing direct sun (October is still hot here) with low blood sugar, we had a few confused misidentifications as we searched for another shorebird, briefly turning Greater Yellowlegs and Pectoral Sandpipers into the spectacularly out-of-place Eurasian species we were searching for. From across the lake, we caught a glimpse of a large shorebird with a relatively short bill and dull yellow legs with noticeably roughed-up scapulars and loose, floppy tertials. Driving to the other end of the lake we confirmed it was a Ruff, another shorebird with spectacular plumage while breeding in the arctic, sporting its drab non-breeding plumage for us. In celebration we found a patch of shade near the water and pulled out our sandwiches. Nell and I were very likely the first people in Arizona history to eat a reuben in the presence of a Ruff. Two more life birds for the day.

Baird's Sandpiper (left) and Ruff (right) - note how ruff it looks

Coffee with the Quetzal

After another two-hour jaunt, venturing southward from the I-10 via dirt road, we arrived at Cave Creek Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains, a nationally famous birding spot for turning up Mexican species that can be found nowhere else in the United States. The sun was setting but still we hoped to see the Eared Quetzals before we settled down to camp for the night. From previous reports we knew to park at the bridge along Forest Road 42 just down canyon from the Southwest Research Station. There were a couple parked cars but we didn’t see any other birders. We walked the road, stretching our legs, enjoying the quiet and cool canyon air, tall oaks and pines lining the road. Investigating some curious sounds coming from an apple tree along the road we found a dozen or so Red-naped Sapsuckers having a fruit feast, the most of this species either of us had ever seen in one place.

Momentarily distracted from our Quetzal quest, we then heard the distinctive squeal from about a quarter mile down canyon. We hurriedly shuffled down the road and spotted some movement through the trees. With each movement, there was a new announcement: “SqueeEEE-chuck”. From the other direction a few wide-eyed birders rounded the corner in pursuit and we all tried to catch glimpses of the visitors from the Sierra Madre Occidental. The birds were headed up canyon, presumably to roost for the night. We followed their sounds in the waning light, eventually catching a glimpse of one of the bird’s spectacularly blue back.

Blue backside of an Eared Quetzal – photo: Nell Smith

We hoped that this wouldn't be our only encounter with the quetzals, but still, hearing their squeals and seeing that shockingly blue back was already a highlight of the year. Elated and relieved, we could rest easy that night knowing we had experienced the Eared Quetzal, our fourth life bird of the day. Anything more was icing on the cake.

We headed to the John Hands Campground, a nondescript patch of flat ground next to the creek which was essentially abandoned when the forest service removed all basic campground amenities. We found it to be more than satisfactory, not least because we had it all to ourselves.

As dusk turned to night, we heard the tooting of (Mountain) Northern Pygmy-Owls, a Mexican subspecies whose song is slightly different than other Northern Pygmy-Owls. Listen for its uneven delivery of toots:

Later Whiskered Screech-Owls kicked off the next phase of the night with a burst of vocal activity, making a curious variety of sounds I had never heard before. I suspect it was a mix of adults and immatures judging from the varied quality of the calls but I’m not sure. Here is a phone recording from inside our tent to give an idea of how loud it was:

We also had some mammalian visitors in the night. Several times throughout the night we heard the rustling and sniffing of an apparently very curious critter just outside the tent. When we shot up and shined a headlamp towards the sound, our eyes were filled with the terrifying sight of a fluffy black and white skunk tail poised for action just feet away. Each time, thankfully, our friend the skunk would trot away without also filling our noses.

At dawn the next morning we brewed some coffee and headed back to the bridge on Forest Road 42. Sure enough the Eared Quetzals returned from their roost, this time foraging nonchalantly in trees overhanging the road much to the delight of the handful of birders present.

Eared Quetzal – photo: Nell Smith

Just look at that freakin’ bird.

Each time they moved to a new perch they would chatter and squeal in the most delightful way. Just listen to this freakin’ bird:

Here is the female in all her glory:

Here is the male, exciting a giggle from the author:

More sounds and photos can be found on our eBird checklist here.

We spent a couple hours with the quetzals as they worked their way down canyon until they eventually flew to some inaccessible trees further from the road. Later, on our way out, with our windows rolled down, we could hear the quetzals still squealing in the distance. In these situations you just can't help but say: What a good bird!

We decided to hike a nearby trail before the long journey home. We got some beautiful views of Cave Creek Canyon, both of us smiling ear to ear appreciating the excellent birds we had seen and the adventure they inspired us to go on.

A smiling Nell Smith in the Chiricahua Mountains

Getting Started – Birding by Ear with Merlin

2020-09-16T00:00:00Z

If you've been reading my blog, maybe my rambling about birds (coupled with a complete lack of public social life and a yearning for brief relief from constant confrontation with the absurd cruelty of present reality) has inspired a bird curiosity. Maybe you've taken note of the birds singing outside and maybe you've even used your phone to record a few minutes of sound. Nice.

In my previous post I hinted at the virtues of listening without assigning labels to sounds, but there is a very big flip-side to that: there is also tremendous value in being able to name the birds you hear. Learning the voice and patterns of specific birds not only develops a general listening proficiency, but adds depths of nuance, associations and connections to a purely aesthetic or utilitarian mode of listening. It can turn a bird sound jumble into a choir of kin.

Moving beyond a vague concept of “bird”, a named bird becomes familiar. When you observe the behavior of a named bird, such as a Great-tailed Grackle shrieking loudly in a parking lot tree, now you have a few bits of knowledge you didn’t have before: Great-tailed Grackles are loud, adapt well to human-altered landscapes, and they are pretty fun birds. Just by learning a bird’s name, you intuitively accumulate knowledge of their habits and preferences which in turn begins to crack open your own perceptions of your surroundings.

Of course the names themselves have no inherent value or truth. Some are descriptive and amusing like Red-breasted Nuthatch while others are nonsense like the Olive Warbler, which is neither olive-colored nor an olive eater nor technically a warbler — not to mention the contentious standing of the patronymic bird names. The names are tools to help organize your observations, thoughts, feelings, and memories. They allow for communication and sharing of ideas and knowledge. Learning birds' names creates a scaffolding for your bird memory palace. Each bird name is a big bucket to catch and store drips of bird knowledge that leak through the roof of human perception.

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”

Slow motion video of a Great-tailed Grackle

Most people don't get into birds because of an interest in sound but that is how I started. The best part about getting started birding by ear is that you don't need to buy anything. Binoculars and a field guide are great but they’re not required to get started.

There are troves of bird information and resources available with more becoming available all the time, many online and many free. A good first step towards bird literacy is to download the free Merlin app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I generally ignore the “primary” function of the app, which is to give you ID suggestions based on color, size, behavior, location, and date as well as automatically identifying photos of birds. All well and good but that is not how I use the app or why I recommend it.

Home screen for Merlin

The features I regularly use are in the “Explore Species” section of the app. If you are curious what birds are around, you can input your location and date to display the most likely species based on eBird data with bar charts showing abundance trends throughout the year.

... and Voila!

Merlin's first six most likely species near me (accurate ☑️)

For each species there is a short description of the bird along with photos, range maps, and sounds. Often overlooked, I love the short text descriptions accompanying the photos. Far from cold and clinical scientific descriptions, they often betray an exuberant love of the bird. One of my favorite entries is for the House Sparrow:

“…Males have smart black bibs, bright rufous napes, and stunningly patterned wings with brilliant buffs and browns. Underparts are pale pearly-gray. Females are plain brown with cute face and lighter eyebrow…”

Pure poetry. You wouldn’t know it from this description that the House Sparrow, one of the most widespread species in the world, found near almost every human habitation on earth, is often dismissed and even maligned by many birders.

In my opinion, the reason the app is essential for every birder of all experience levels is its ever expanding catalogue of bird sounds, complete with accompanying scrolling spectrograms. Merlin provides a perfect compliment to the tried-and-true Lang Elliott sound library used by the Sibley and Audubon apps. It provides alternative takes and, more importantly, fills in many of the gaps. One example is the Crissal Thrasher “churry churry” call. Despite being their most frequent vocalization, its absence in other libraries contributed to a personal blind spot for years. Merlin’s treatment of sound is sometimes so exhaustive that it can be a bit overwhelming for species with many subspecies and regional dialects, such as the Red Crossbill. I wonder if someone who downloads the US/Canada bird pack really needs to have recordings of every subspecies worldwide. In general I appreciate the thoroughness though.

So I encourage you to download Merlin and get to know your avian neighbors. Load up the most common species near you and take a listen to their sounds. In many cases the familiarity of the sound will click immediately and you will finally have a name for the bird whose song is already deeply embedded in your subconscious. In other cases an unfamiliar sound, once brought to attention, will suddenly be heard everywhere. Once you learn the most common sounds you can expand out from there, on and ever onward! I am still “discovering” new sounds from familiar birds all the time.

For those wanting to go a little deeper there are many recommended resources: Larkwire is a well-designed birdsong learning app that has helped me prepare for many field seasons as well as the web-based (and free) Dendroica; Nathan Pieplow’s Field Guide to Bird Sounds of North America is eminently useful for the bird repertoire completist with a mostly successful attempt to catalogue similar bird sounds for comparison; Donald Kroodsma’s new Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist gives plenty of interesting birdsong insights with recordings and suggestions for observation and amateur study. Of course, the birds themselves are the best resources for bird sound and just learning a few of their names will open the door to an exciting new world to explore.

Happy listening.

Grassland of the Pipit

2020-08-24T00:00:00Z

A word of advice: record the places you go. It is easy to forget how remarkable everyday sounds are until you are far away, both in distance and in time.

Below is one of the only sound recordings I made during my 2015 field season in the grasslands of Alberta, Canada. One of my tasks for that research project was to conduct line transects where I would write down every bird seen and heard while walking a predetermined line for a set amount of time. Before doing each line transect there is a buffer period where you are required to be still, watch, and listen. On this morning I set up my cheap Zoom H2 field recorder to document the buffer period.

(Headphones recommended)

At the time I was new enough to birding that I didn’t fully realize I wouldn’t get to hear many of these grassland birds' songs again for a long time, including Savannah Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows and Long-billed Curlews. All of these birds stop during migration or even spend winters in Arizona, but while they're here they are mostly quiet. Grassland birds are often cryptic in plumage and habits, usually staying well hidden in the grass. During breeding season, however, they fill the air with song.

The bird that I treasure most from this recording is the Sprague’s Pipit. This is a bird that I have seen exactly once in my life, though I heard them skylarking most mornings in the summer of 2015. In their breeding displays they fly up into thin air, high enough to become essentially invisible from the ground. With wings spread they float downward while delivering a descending cascade of song, loud enough to be heard from the ground where judicious females watch and listen. They then flap up to regain their lost altitude and do it again. And again. And again. Displaying males repeat this process for between a half hour and three hours or more at a time. It is an incredible physical feat; just imagine singing at the top of your lungs while sprinting up a mountain. This only adds to what is for me an aesthetically awesome feat; these kaleidoscopic songs seem to emanate from the sky itself, the particularly expansive sky found above rolling grassland that extends beyond sight in every direction.

Sprague’s Pipits, along with most grassland birds, are in steep decline. There has been an estimated 73% population loss since 1970 – there were nearly four times as many Sprague's Pipits 50 years ago. Destruction and fragmentation of native grassland by development, overgrazing, and invasive species are all taking their toll. But you probably already knew that. You find a similar story everywhere you look when paying attention to the non-human world. One becomes inured to this kind of statistic. Yet the birds are still there and that is something to celebrate. Enjoy it! They return year after year to fill the world with magic. They're right out there, go see!

The Phainopepla is a curious bird

2020-07-27T00:00:00Z

The Phainopepla is a curious bird. Their tall crest and feathers of silky black or gray are accentuated by piercing blood-red eyes. They reveal bright white wing patches in their somewhat slow yet buoyant flight. In the Sonoran Desert they fiercely defend their clumps of desert mistletoe from intruders with an inquisitive “Wert?” A charming and charismatic bird at first glance, the closer one looks into any aspect of its natural history, one realizes why Allan Philips claimed in The Birds of Arizona: "Phainopeplas have no respect for the rules."

"And there isn't any need for you to doubt it"

-Rum Tum Tugger

Phainopepla nitens

"Wert?" call

The Phainopepla song is a modest volume series of burry and polyphonic phrases, evocative of blackbird and shrike vocalizations in their complexity. Those that work closely with Phainopepla have noted a bizarre vocal behavior when they're distressed while being handled: they unleash a near constant stream of loud (and very convincing) imitations. These include a variety of hawk and other predator calls, perhaps in an attempt to distract or frighten, but they also mimic a wide variety of small harmless songbirds. Investigating this behavior, there is a study that shows a variety of imitations mixed with alarm calls is most effective at rallying other nearby species to help mob a predator. When threatened, the Phainopepla vocally simulates a multi-species scolding mob attempting to drive a predator away. This in turn helps manifest a real mob with real birds. Avian aural Twitter bots.

Under normal circumstances one rarely hears these imitations in the field though. I had no idea Phainopeplas were mimics at all when I encountered a lone male singing from the top of a palo verde in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve in January 2019. I could hear the louder burry phrases typical of their song but interspersed throughout were quiet sounds I couldn’t quite make out. I snuck myself under the tree where the bird was singing and with the assistance of my microphone I then could hear what he was muttering. Listen below:

After some introductory phrases he launches into a series of imitations at around 17 seconds in what is referred to as their Quiet Song. In this two minute clip I hear imitations of at least a dozen species, from desert dwelling critters like Curve-billed Thrasher and Harris’ Antelope Squirrel to a variety of higher elevation forest birds like Spotted Towhee, Cassin’s Kingbird, Tree Swallow, and Western Wood-pewee. Unlike the famous mimic, the Northern Mockingbird, which belts out its collection of imitations at the top of its lungs, the Phainopepla whispers them. They can’t be heard from more than a stone’s throw away, so who are they for? Sometimes quiet songs serve to strengthen pair bonds when birds are in close proximity – but I didn't see any other Phainopeplas nearby. Was he practicing? I doubt it – they sound pretty crystallized to me. When listening to the extended recording he uses the same imitations many times with very similar phrasing and delivery. Was he feeling threatened, either by me or something else? Again, I doubt it – giving quiet imitations of birds that are currently hundreds of miles away doesn't seem like an effective mob-eliciting strategy in this context. Whatever the case may be, the function or meaning of imitation seems to be flexible in different contexts. They are very impressive though, why be so coy about it?

"And there isn't any need for me to shout it"

-Rum Tug Tugger

Wait a minute, how is this desert-breeder imitating so many forest birds to begin with? Without doing any research we’re already clued-in to a fascinating aspect of this bird’s natural history just by listening to his peculiar quiet song. Clearly, this male has been around. He has seen (and heard) some things.

While Phainopepla are fiercely territorial, mistletoe berry-loving, desert-breeding birds in winter and early spring, they largely vacate the premises by early summer. Around the same time, they are found in mid-elevation riparian and oak woodland habitat, sometimes hundreds of miles away. There they are social creatures, forming loose colonies, nesting together in the same trees, eating berries from the same bushes. They incorporate many more insects into their diet. They’re like a different bird.

For almost a century people have wondered whether these were distinct populations of Phainopepla or the same birds breeding twice a year in different habitats. There are still many details to be worked out but a recent study has shown GPS-tagged desert-breeding Phainopepla do migrate to the expected higher elevation habitats each year and there is no discernible genetic difference between populations in each location. This strongly suggests the same birds breed in both habitats. Aside from a handful of very interesting outliers, most other North American birds are constrained by various environmental, physiological, and behavioral limitations and only have one chance per year to breed. If Phainopeplas are in fact itinerant or migratory double-breeders, “[They] would be behaviorally flexible –in migration, breeding, and social-structure– to a degree not documented in any other North American bird” (Chu, M. and G. Walseberg, Birds of the World, 2020). As for the rules and constructs, generalizations and metaphorical boxes we try to fit birds into, the Phainopepla indeed has no respect for them.

“For he will do as he do do

And there's no doing anything about it”

-Rum Tug Tugger

Roseate Burrow #18

2020-07-08T00:00:00Z

In the Summer of 2019 I worked on Stratton Island in Maine for National Audubon's Project Puffin. There were no puffins but many birds bred on the island including four species of tern. While Common Terns were the most...common, there was a sizeable Roseate population in the center of the colony, a few Arctic Terns scattered throughout, and Least Terns on the sandy beach landing.

We had many intimate and intense interactions with the terns that summer. We regularly checked nests, counted eggs, weighed, measured and banded chicks all while the adult terns screamed in our ears, pecked the tops of our heads with surprising force, and aggressively covered us with tern excrement.

Typical tern greetings in slow motion

It wasn’t all chaos though. We also spent a lot of time in platform blinds throughout the colony which allowed us to observe the birds in relative peace. Courtship dances, copulation, eggs hatching, chicks hopping up and down awkwardly flapping their wings. We watched certain chicks get fed over and over while others starved. We watched curious birds wander too far from their nest only to get pecked viciously by their neighbors. We also watched many birds take to the sky on fresh wings, over time gaining the grace and buoyancy of their parent's flight. The blinds allowed us to observe the entire breeding process in all its messiness.

A view from the blind

The blinds were still a bit removed though. Towering several feet over the colony, we watched through binoculars and spotting scopes. With nearly four thousand terns before eggs even started to hatch, the sound of the colony was, in a word, extra. Any attempt to hear one specific bird was masked by the sounds of hundreds of other vociferous squawkers. What we couldn’t hear were the quiet tern sounds – not necessarily an oxymoron.

Partway through the season we were visited by Bob McGuire (a world class sound recordist, just check many of the audio credits on the Sibley Birds app), who helped open my eyes to the magic of remote recording or "drop rigs." One morning at camp he excitedly passed around his headphones for us to listen to what he had just recorded. The concept was simple enough, he had hidden small omnidirectional microphones in the rock burrow of a Roseate Tern then watched from a distance. When we slipped on the headphones we heard the terns like we never had before.

Omnidirectional mics have several benefits: They’re small and hideable, have low self-noise, and are less susceptible to wind noise. However they have one drawback for isolated species recordings: omnidirectional mics record in all directions equally so the passing lobster boat or obnoxious bird or any other noise will be picked up as if the microphone is pointed directly towards it. What I hadn’t considered was the inverse-square relationship between distance and intensity of sound: if you half the distance between a mic and a sound source, the intensity of sound will be four times greater. The trick is getting the mic close enough to the subject.

The next evening I tried it out myself:

(Headphones Recommended) -- Recorded with Zoom H5 and FEL Clippy XLR EM172s

The recording starts with the sound of a typical alarmed tern colony. Common and Roseate Terns yell in the distance and then return to their nests all riled up. It is past sunset, fiery clouds fading into the dark blue night. We hear the parent Roseate Tern return, giving its piercing alarm call and aggressive chatter just outside the rock burrow, making sure neighbors keep their appropriate distance. Switching to the more social "chevink" call at 1:03, it heads into the burrow. Moving from left to right in the stereo field, the adult is greeted by its 3-5 day old chicks with quiet scratchy calls. After the initial excitement they all quietly mutter to each other. When I hear this I imagine the adult tern settling down as the chicks huddle and squeeze underneath to rest in the warmth of their parent’s puffed out body feathers. All is calm in burrow #18. Neighboring terns also quiet down and we hear the distant rhythmic crashing of ocean waves. Of course, it never fully settles for long – tern colonies are only varying levels of raucous at all hours and trouble is never too far off.

This is likely the first of many posts about the sounds of Stratton Island and is just one of many examples of this recording technique. Normally field recording attempts to capture and recreate what we can hear, but remote "drop rig" recording can allow us to hear what we otherwise couldn't. Paradoxically, the technology that removes us can also embed us more deeply with our subject, allowing a peek into intimate social interactions with the emotional salience afforded by sound. We hear what birds whisper when we're not around.

Water in the Gulch

2020-06-30T00:00:00Z

It's another hot dry day in Phoenix. Wildfires are burning across Arizona including the fifth largest fire in state history, 30 miles northeast of where I sit. The birds out the window have their beaks wide open, increasing their evaporative cooling while also appearing to share my slack-jawed incredulity at the relentless low-desert summer heat.

Normally at this time of year I do biological field work in cooler climes but with many field seasons being suspended this year due to COVID-19, I am plodding through summer with the rest of Phoenix. Through the magic of digital recording, however, I’m able to time-travel to a mere three months ago: It is in the mid-60s and after a sudden early spring downpour, the normally bone-dry gulch behind my house is full of flowing water.

(Headphones Recommended) -- Recorded with Sony PCM-A10 and FEL Stereo Clippy EM172s

The somewhat unusual aural combination of flowing water with Sonoran desert regulars like a whistling Verdin, cooing Mourning Doves, and calling Curve-billed Thrashers all add up to a special and relaxing desert soundscape.

The Curve-billed Thrashers, however, were anything but relaxed. In a cholla a few feet from the flowing water was a freshly built nest and four thrashers interacting with a palpable intensity. One bird was singing constantly while the others vibrated with agitation, a stream of chatter flowing out of them. I normally find Curve-billed Thrasher songs to be extraordinary and beautiful, every bit as complex and impressive as a Northern Mockingbird’s song but more sweet and melodious (and less obnoxious). The songs in this recording, though, have a decidedly aggressive edge to them.

Curve-billed Thrasher - Toxostoma curvirostre

Most of the aggression was directed towards or instigated by the singing bird, seemingly an intruder. The other three tended to be closer to one another, though they were all moving around quite a bit. Was this a confrontation between two pairs as one would expect, or could this be a single intruder on a three-thrasher breeding arrangement? As far as I know, cooperative breeding has not been described in Curve-billed Thrashers, but in other species like the familiar Acorn Woodpecker or the less familiar but more closely related White-breasted Thrasher, kiddos will often assist their parents with the care for young.

Without any distinguishing marks on the birds to tell them apart I can only guess what was going on. As two of the thrashers locked their feet and claws onto each others bodies, not letting go as they tumbled down from tree branch to razor-sharp cholla spines, one thing was clear: there was not room for all four thrashers near this nest.

It is easy to idealize the life of birds. We intuit that a singing bird is a happy bird and there are studies that show singing does activate the reward centers in a birds brain – they enjoy it. However, bird song can also express extreme aggression in life-and-death circumstances. Birds live complex and dynamic lives and we are only just beginning to unravel their complexity.

Whitewater Draw Mystery

2020-06-24T00:00:00Z

Listen to this:

(Headphones recommended)

It's been over a year since I recorded this in March 2019 and I’m only just beginning to understand what it is.

We arrived late, the graded dirt road violently vibrating my Honda Fit. After a few minutes of straining to hear, I turned off the radio and listened to the sound of every piece of my car and body rattle. We pulled into the dirt parking area, shut off the engine and stepped outside into the cool night air. Suddenly free from the confines of the car, our ears began to open up beyond the immediate vicinity, expanding outward in every direction into the darkness...until we heard them.

My girlfriend Nell and I had come to Whitewater Draw on the last night of February to experience the Sandhill Cranes that winter at this 600-acre wetland in the southeast corner of Arizona. A huge striking bird, I had only previously seen handfuls of migrating cranes off rural county roads outside Phoenix. Hearing tens of thousands of them at night though, distant, yet filling the darkness with their prehistoric trumpeting croaks and screams was awe-inspiring.

In the morning, we were posted up by the wetland before sunrise, soaking in the sights and sounds before the cranes took off to forage in nearby agricultural fields for the morning.

Sunrise at Whitewater Draw 3/1/2019

Fun fact about Sandhill Cranes: their tracheas are elongated and coiled into their sternum. This tracheal elongation allows the cranes to have deeper, more harmonically rich voices with lower formant frequencies, making them sound even larger than they already are. The coiling around the sternum, a clever way to fit this elongated trachea into a crane body, is also thought to allow the sternum to act as a amplifying resonator. In other words, it helps the cranes croak and scream at ear-shattering volume. Cranes are amazing.

Photo: Parker Davis

Once most of the cranes had departed for the morning we were left to wander the grounds to see what other birds and critters were around — which brings us to the aforementioned recording that has transfixed me ever since. In a tiny murky pond opposite the cranes were a pair of Northern Shovelers, striking ducks with large spade-shaped bills, and an interesting sound. I pointed my parabolic microphone towards the shovelers, slipped on my headphones and pressed record. Here it is again:

So good. A low clucking sound, sometimes phoneticized as ‘Tsook’ is the most common Northern Shoveler vocalization so that seemed to account for some of what can be heard. The grunty-smoochy sounds, however, were something I was unfamiliar with. I chalked it up to a high-intensity courtship vocalization that is only given at specific times of year (by exceptionally horny birds) and filed it away.

In the coming months, I would return to the recording and try to find any mention of this grunty-smoochy Northern Shoveler vocalization. The excellent Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds curated by Nathan Pieplow is my go-to resource for a concise yet near-comprehensive recorded catalogue of bird vocalizations in North America — but this sound was absent. I browsed the extensive offerings at the Macaulay Library and Xeno-Canto but still could not find this vocalization. Even the Birds of the World account had no mention of this vocalization as far as I could tell, though I often find text descriptions of bird vocalizations a bit inscrutable:

McKinney (McKinney 1970) recorded rhythmical wheezy whe or thic or quiet took notes by males during copulation; also recorded one male giving a long sighing noise at copulation. Postcopulatory behavior by males usually includes a loud, nasal paaay, followed by a series of repeated calls.
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/norsho/cur/sounds

Audio recording of birds is still a relatively young pursuit. While it is quickly gaining popularity, it is still not widely adopted by the birding world so the possibility of recording an uncommon or cryptic vocalization for the first time is a real possibility (especially when you add state or county location qualifiers). I excitedly wondered if I had made such a recording breakthrough. It wasn’t until early the next spring when I heard the sound coming from the edge of a mucky pond with not a duck in sight that I began to suspect this was no shoveler sound at all.

Growing up in Phoenix, I rarely had occasion to listen to frogs and until recently have not given them much thought. With a sneaking suspicion I got ahold of Lang Elliott’s beautiful Frogs and Toads of North America and listened to all 99 tracks and 70 minutes. I was floored. The diversity of frog sounds and their charming wonkiness were completely entrancing. Still new to frog sound ID, I could say my grunty-smoochers were probably one of a handful of leopard frog species found in Arizona. A quick perusal of the Arizona Game and Fish Department website revealed Whitewater Draw is home to the Plains Leopard Frog.

It turns out my “Northern Shoveler” recording is almost entirely non-avian. The frogs that I failed to notice were likely giving what is referred to as an advertisement call. Frog advertisement calls are thought to function similarly to bird song in establishing territory, attracting females, repelling rival males. As with most animal vocalizations though, more nuances are likely to be found with closer study. These advertisement calls were apparently ineffectual on me but through sheer bizarreness eventually drew me into the wonderful world of amphibian acoustics. This is why I love paying attention to sounds, whether they’re birds, frogs, music or especially unknown sounds: you might learn something. And it is fun.