Outside My Window

This is a test.  For the next two minutes this video will test your ability to identify birds by sound.  This is only a test.

Well, actually it’s a video of mockingbirds singing. Whose songs and calls are they imitating?

Use this quiz to get your ears in shape for birding by ear this spring.  At minimum you’ll remember the mockingbirds’ three-repeat song.

This is only a test.  If there had been an actual blue jay in the video you would have seen him.

(video by grcapro on YouTube)

This year snow geese and tundra swans peaked in eastern Pennsylvania in mid to late February.

I missed their migration but Meredith Lombard visited Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area and captured this video of tundra swan interactions.

These four swans are really hooting it up.  The quartet began when two pairs encouraged their mates with lean-forward and wing-quiver calls.   But the quivering wing display is also used in antagonistic encounters.  When the males got too close the dominant male had had enough.  He rushed the other one.

Whoa!  The less aggressive male immediately sat on the water in a submissive posture and the situation defused.  Watch him curl his neck down in an S position and look away.

Tundra swans can make music together.  Sometimes they jazz it up.

(video by Meredith Lombard on Flickr)

On February mornings, the mourning doves sing songs of love.

The males perch high and puff their throats when they sing.  Though they are slender, they resemble pigeons when they do this.

Coo-OOOO Cooo Cooo Cooo.

Some say they sound like owls but those who think the sound is mournful named this dove.

Click here to hear their mourning morning song.

AND A QUIZ!    Identify the other bird singing in the recording.  His song is not normally heard in southwestern PA in the summer.  The mourning dove lives year-round from Maine to Mexico, from Canada to Cuba.  The other bird will give you a hint on the location of the recording.

(photo by Dori on Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)

This winter in addition to irruptions of evening grosbeaks and redpolls, crossbills have come to Pennsylvania.

I’ve seen white-winged crossbills before, especially in the winter of 2009, but this year they’ve eluded me.  People send news of them to PABIRDS but when I travel to their reported location they aren’t there.  True to their irruptive nature crossbills are always on the move.  Dang!

Last week I ran into Claire Staples while on my lunch break in Oakland.  We exchanged bird sightings and Claire said she’d experienced the same problem finding crossbills until quite recently when she heard them near her home in Squirrel Hill.

The clue is their sound.  Claire says they sound like typewriters, a useful tip as I actually do remember what typewriters sound like.  Shows how old I am!

So now on my walks I’m trying hard not to look for crossbills as I don’t want to jinx my chances of seeing them.  But I’m listening for the sound of typewriters.

(Click here to hear.)

(photo by Heather Jacoby)

Guess why this South American bird is called a Bearded Bellbird.

(video from YouTube)

p.s. that beard is not made of feathers.  It’s long stringy skin. 

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find a bird when it’s making an alarm call?  And how easy it is to find when singing?

It’s not just that birds hide when alarmed and sing out in the open.  They change their tune to conceal or reveal.  They know that the “physical structure of a sound affects the ease with which a listener — predator or neighbor — can locate its source.” (*)

Northern cardinals are a great example of this principle.

When they’re hiding in a thicket, their call is a thin, faint, high note.  The alarm call’s narrow frequency range makes it really hard to pinpoint.  Click here for an example.

By contrast, when they’re announcing their presence or guarding their territory the sound is rich and variable in a wide frequency range.  This gives it a lot more “hooks” for our ears to grab onto.  Here’s an example of their song and contact calls.

So when birds are warning each other of danger, there’s a reason why you can’t find their location.  They’re hiding by voice.

(Inspiration for this Tenth Page is from page 220(*) of Ornithology by Frank B. Gill. Photo by Cris Hamilton)

Earlier this month I watched a flock of robins and starlings feast on the Bradford pears near Heinz Chapel.  Birds usually don’t sing in the fall but this flock was muttering and whisper-singing.  Three birds in particular caught my ear.

A robin sang softly.
A starling mimicked the robin.
A mockingbird mimicked the starling mimicking the robin.

By the time the robin’s song came out of the mockingbird’s mouth it was nearly unrecognizable.   (Click here for the robin’s song.)

European starlings, on the left above, are considered mimics but they have wiry voices that distort whatever they say.  Here’s a typical starling song. At the 00:32 mark he does a good imitation of a house sparrow. I couldn’t find an audio clip of a starling mimicking a robin.

Northern mockingbirds, on the right, are much better mimics than starlings.  They can follow a robin’s tune and cadence but miss the melodious thrush harmony.  They brazenly mask this deficiency: “I meant to sing the tune without the harmony.”  Click here to hear a mockingbird mimicking many birds, including robins.

The mockingbird at Heinz Chapel clearly copied the starling’s wiry song including his poor imitation of the robin.

It was like a game of telephone.  There were two levels of distortion.

(European starling by Paul Carter via Wikimedia Commons. Northern mockingbird by Dick Daniels via Wikimedia Commons. Click on these imbedded links to see the original photos.)

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can see a whole flock of turkeys on the move.

In this photo Steve Gosser found 30 of them at Beaver Run Reservoir in 2010.  This fall I saw 16 at Schenley Park.

If you’re quiet you might also hear them calling or gobbling.  Click here and scroll down to hear an assortment of turkey sounds from purrs to explosive gobbles.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(photo by Steve Gosser)