Hi Tweets,

Toni writes:

>I have been waiting for someone to explain to me why I felt that ID by ear
>is not acceptable - just in case somebody *really* thought it was .....
>and this seems to be a fairly good explanation on why NOT .....

As someone who has done breeding bird inventories in provincial forests
professionally, I can attest one depends very much on song-ID and--within
certain limits--call ID. Both are a matter not only of experience in
fine-point discrimination of sound-qualities but also of knowing where one's
limitations are. In the latter case, field-notes describing the song/call
will help when hitting the books afterward or asking someone more
experienced with the local avifauna. I can also say from experience that if
on any given survey day I actually *saw* more than 5% of the birds included
on that day's survey, it was pure luck.

With enough experience, one becomes acquainted with calls that one can begin
to sort out so that they begin to 'sound like' thrushes, or finches, to give
two examples. Watch and listen to enough shorebirds and one can begin to
distinguish even between different genera; there is a 'feel' to many the
calls of most of the Calidris shorebirds that's quite different to those of
the 'longlegs' Tringas, and often one can hear a night-migrating bird and be
not only sure that it's a shorebird but reasonably certain that there's a
plover 'feel' to the call. Warblers tend generically to sound different to
sparrows in their calls. With enough experience--and that's all it is, ain't
no magic to it--you'll be surprised at the subtlety of your own ID skills
after a little while.

If you feel you're slow learning and remembering sounds, you're in the vast
majority: most people's auditory memories are nowhere near as good as their
visual ones, so it usually takes way more time and more effort to emplace
the same amount of auditory experience as visual. For example, it took me
over ten northbound migrations before I didn't need to get a visual
confirmation on Vancouver BC's *regular* warbler species, let alone
vagrants, and I *still* don't have a 100% reliable grasp on the difference
of songs between unseen Hammmond's Flycatcher Empidonax hammondii and Dusky
Flycatcher E. oberholseri except when the latter is doing it's 'Vespers'
song of 'dew-hic'. It really does sound like it's saying that, too, BTW,
with a tiny little pluck-note just before the 'dew' if you're really close,
so a typical song goes something like
'kdew-hic....kdew...kdew...kdew-hic...kdew-hic'. Cool song on a summer evening.

But the same principle covers call-ID as any other: guess for practice,
only, and take notes when you don't know or you're not sure. From
experience, it really helps to be in the presence of someone who actually
knows and is willing to help you learn by testing your ear's acuity and your
memory for fine-point difference.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net