The Sound Approach to Birding

The authors had been inspired to write this book by The New Approach to Identification, by Peter Grant and Killian Mullarney. Apparently, that was a revolutionary publication that summarized and revolutionized birding by physical characteristics such as plumage, age, molt, etc. (I say “apparently” because it was before my birding lifetime and I haven’t had the pleasure of reading this classic). This work seeks to do the same thing with bird vocalizations. The goal is “to try to provide the vocabulary and biological background needed to bridge the gap between bird sounds and the much better known visual aspect of birding”.

That’s a very lofty goal, but it’s a niche that desperately needed to be filled. There are plenty of audio CD’s of bird vocalizations, and these are essential to birding by ear. But they do not lead to an understanding of the sounds you hear. Sure, they may help to identify the singer, but you don’t get any understanding of the sound itself, or why the bird is making that sound. This book seeks to fill in those gaps. And it will also help with some difficult identifications.

It is very hard to describe sounds, so audio examples are a necessity for a book like this. Thus, two audio CD’s are included with the book, each one packed full with 99 tracks. Every one of the tracks is used as an example in the text, and detailed information is given for each one. The species name, time and location of the recording, brief description, and list of sounds heard in the background (great idea!) are included. Sonagrams are given for most of the tracks, which helps to reinforce the concepts and information in the text.

The book starts with a general introduction to sound, including such concepts as pitch, tone, and rhythm. This is vital, as it gives birders a common vocabulary to use when describing sounds. It goes on to give a tutorial in interpreting sonagrams. I get the impression that many birders shy away from sonagrams, probably because they don’t understand them. But after reading this book and The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsma before it, I’ve come to realize how important they can be. Like anything else they take practice to learn. That’s where these two books come in. They both give many examples that can be used along with the included audio CD’s to develop this skill. But even if you don’t get to the point that you can convert sound to sonagram in your head, they can still come in handy. Many times while reading this book I found that there were qualities of the sound that were evident in the sonagram that I couldn’t distinguish with my ear.

The authors give a good bit of attention to ageing bird sounds, something that I had not given much thought to. Vocalizations start while the chicks are still in the egg! It has been found that many chicks will call to each other prior to hatching. Songbirds have to learn their song, and there is a progression of stages that they go through before they consistently sing their adult songs. Immature birds start with a subsong. This is usually a quiet, steady stream of babbled sounds, nothing like adult songs. By spring they usually are singing a “plastic” song, which is shorter and often includes identifiable song phrases. But the timing is usually different and thus they have the potential to greatly confuse birders. By the end of their first year most have graduated to full adult-like songs. So if you’ve ever seen an apparent adult bird in spring singing an unusual tune, it might be that you’re listening to a plastic song. I know that I’m going to be listening closer now, trying to pick out these different stages.

Extensive treatment is given to bird sounds and their relationship with taxonomy. The main example here is crossbills. In North America there are 9 different “types” of Red Crossbill, mainly differing in their calls. It’s possible that these are entirely different species (which would be an absolute headache for birders). It seems that the situation is similar in Europe. The various calls of all the European crossbills are described, included on the CD, and shown in sonagrams. This is a very important topic for birders, as there could be many such “cryptic species” out there, even among some very well-known species. The only way to differentiate them would be by voice.

Many other topics are covered as well, such as playback, recording equipment, mimicry, and dialects. One very interesting fact has to do with sound degradation and recordings. Have you ever found that playback of certain recordings just never solicit a response from birds? It could be that the sound in the original recording was degraded, either by the recording equipment or by the environment. The authors have demonstrated that it is usually the sound quality (how degraded it is) and not the volume of a rival’s song that causes a bird to respond. Therefore, if you are playing a degraded song it is unlikely to evoke a response, no matter how loudly you play it.

The authors have focused almost exclusively on European birds. Even so, those not familiar with the European avifauna will have little difficulty as the concepts covered are the same regardless of the species used as examples. However, in a few cases I found that my lack of familiarity with these birds lessened the impact of what was being presented. For instance, many recordings and tips are given for Old World Warblers. These birds are predominately drab things that all look remarkably alike, and thus must be identified primarily by voice (for North American birders, think empidonax flycatchers). I got the impression that this information was new and different and would be incredibly useful for identification purposes. But since I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting one of these birds, I’m just not sure.

The only problem I found was that a couple of sonagrams are missing. The text refers to sonagrams for tracks 26 and 27 on the second CD, but I couldn’t find them.

There are plenty of commercially available recordings to help birders learn bird sounds. But there really haven’t been any tools available to improve your birding by ear skills. Until now, that is. This book is a no-brainer, must-buy for European birders. While the examples are less relevant to everyone else, the concepts are not. It is very much recommended to anyone anywhere who wants to increase their auditory expertise.