Time was that I did not know the difference between
a grackle and a crow. Or a crow and a
raven, for that matter. However, these days I can spot that crow on a telephone
wire or treetop or that grackle underneath our bird feeder. I don’t profess to ever having seen a raven,
yet I know that they are the biggest of the three.
When I married my husband, Gerry, I was annoyed that
he would interrupt my conversation in the car, or at the breakfast table, to
point out a hawk high above the highway or a bluebird flitting about its house
in the backyard. I thought it quite rude
that he was not paying the proper attention to my conversation that it
deserved.
I confess I just didn’t get it. It has been much to
my surprise that after more than a half-century spent ignoring, and perhaps
neglecting birds, I’ve become what I might consider a birder. A novice birder, mind you, but a birder
nonetheless.
Now, we spend entire segments of the weekend gazing
through the windows of our breakfast room.
We quietly watch the activities at our feeders or in the woods that
surround us. Towhees and cardinals,
goldfinches and blue jays sail in and out of our backyard. Shiny
black-feathered grackles often feed on the ground below, scavenging for the tasty
bits that have fallen there.
Music made by our feathered friends has enchanted
mankind since we first heard it. In 1650 Jesuit scholar Athanasius Bircher
compiled notations of bird songs in his musical encyclopedia Musurgia
Universalis. Henry David Thoreau
included so many musings on birds in his 19th century writings that Louis
Agassiz Fuertes compiled them all in a lengthy text complete with Thoreau’s
sketches. “Thoreau on Birds” was
published in 1910 and reprinted in 1993.
Thoreau was years ahead of his time as always, preferring to rely on
keen and alert senses and to think “globally” noticing his feathered neighbors
on nearly a daily basis and observing them interact with life in general.
Many writers and birders have investigated and
studied bird songs in the past decade.
The Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology has studied bird songs
extensively; they have the amazing collection of the Macaulay Library of
Natural Sounds - 130,000 individual records and birds dominate that list.
Bird song scholar, Donald Kroodsma, has written two
books that include some of those bird songs on CD. “The Singing Life of Birds” (2005) and
“Birdsong by the Seasons: A Year of Listening to Birds” (2009) include many
song descriptions, notations, and sonograms.
In his books, Kroodsma explains that a mockingbird sings differently at
night than at dawn. In “Birdsong by the
Seasons” he traveled the world observing and listening. He includes 24 accounts of his own experiences
with birds such as the Pileated Woodpecker in January or the Scarlet Tanager in
Quabbin Park in July.
Don Stap accompanied Kroodsma to South America to
witness the endangered Costa Rican Bellbird which in its natural habitat. In the book “Bird Song: A Natural History”
(2005), Stap explains that the same species of bird might sing a different song
living just a few miles away from another of its kind.
Miyoko Chu is an ornithologist and staff science
writer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York and she has also
written about the birds throughout the year in “Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons
in the Lives of Migratory Birds” (2006.)
Chu includes in the back of her book important information about
supporting the school’s efforts through the Friends of the CLO.
Daniel Rothenberg’s ‘Why Birds Sing: A Journey into
the Mystery of Bird Song” (2005) further explores the voices of the natural
world of birds. He even explains that
maybe birds, like humans, simply sing because they delight in the song.
“Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: Words of Birds” (2011) includes
many of the bird calls and bird songs of North American, British and Northern
European birds. Most of the common birds
we know in New England are described in this book which developed out of a
publication “An A-Z of Birdsong” written by John Bevis in 1995.
One of the most famous naturalists, John James
Audubon compiled marvelous descriptions and sketches in Bird Biographies
(1957). Audubon’s extensive tomes, “American Birds” and “Audubon’s Birds of
America” are beautifully-illustrated classical bird literature.
Today, smart phones boast apps that mimic
many bird calls and bird songs. In
fact, my husband Gerry has been known to tease a towhee into the yard by
playing a clear recording of “drink your teeeeee.” However, Irish essayist
Robert Lynd wrote that “In order to see birds it is necessary to become part of
the silence.” I’m listening. Job 12:7
implores us to “ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air,
they will tell you.” These days, my ears
can translate the “drink your teeee” of the towhee and the “oh-wah-hoo-oo” of
the morning dove. I can’t yet
distinguish the “who cooks for you” in the blackened forest from the jokester
calls of the mockingbird, but I’m on my way.
In the past few years, our library has acquired
several amazing books that can help anyone distinguish the subtle (or
not-so-subtle) differences in bird songs.
“The Bird Songs Bible: The Complete Illustrated Reference for North
American Birds” is edited by Les Beletsky (2010). A similar book, “Bird Songs:
250 North American Birds in Song” (2006) also by Les Beletsky. These are astonishing books that include
digital audio players bound right into the book.
If you would like to spend a few hours, days or
weeks with any of these books of wonder, please visit the library catalog
(subject: bird song) or speak with a librarian to place any of these books on
hold for you.
