Subject: [Tweeters] Hearing Birds
Date: Mar 22 20:18:42 2011
From: notcalm at comcast.net - notcalm at comcast.net


Very neat, David.


Dan Reiff
----- Original Message -----
From: "D & J Nunnallee" <nunnallee at comcast.net>
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 8:05:59 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Hearing Birds

Hello All,

I'm a pretty good sight birder. That's not a brag, rather a statement of
necessity. I *have* to be a pretty good sight birder because I can't be a
good sound birder. I cannot hear many of the higher pitched birds. Often
when I'm with a birding group, while others are chatting about all the
surrounding songs and calls, I'm hearing only robins, Song Sparrows and the
distant crow, together with a good deal of silence.

But today was different. During a sunny period I visited Beaver Lk Park in
Sammamish. I was thrilled to hear the distinct chatter of a flock of
Golden-crowned Kinglets high in the treetops, and following them were
several noisy Chestnut-backed Chickadees. An unseen skulking Winter Wren
came through loud and clear from the underbrush, and the sharp "chink" calls
of juncos seemed to be emanating from just about everywhere. A variety of
other unseen and as-yet unidentified bird sounds brightened the usually
silent woods as I walked the trails.

Of course I'm breaking in a new set of hearing aids, which I have had for
about 4 weeks now. I have used earlier aids including an early version of
the Songfinder (a 2-pound belt-mounted unit which "compresses" high pitched
bird sounds and plays them back at a lower pitch) and the Birder hearing
aids, which selectively amplify the volume of higher pitches. I also have
noise reduction headphones designed for use on jet airplanes.

Hearing aids have come a long way in the past decade or so. All of the
features in the devices I mentioned above, sound compression, high pitch
amplification and noise reduction, plus a host of other 'bells & whistles'
are all features combined in my little behind-the-ear hearing aids. Amazing
stuff, and variations of these features can be combined into user-switchable
programs. Tell your audiologist exactly what you want and s/he will custom
program it for you. Press a button and you are optimized for human speech.
Press it again and you switch to a program optimized for hearing birds. A
third press will take you to a another program you custom designed. White
noise from wind, cars and rushing water are no longer a big problem as the
noise reduction feature does quite a nice job of eliminating it.

I think there are various brands available these days with similar features.
I'm not endorsing a product, but for those interested the brand I bought is
a mid level Phonak.

Now I begin the long process of learning the bird songs which I have rarely
or never heard before.


David Nunnallee
nunnallee at comcast.net
Sammamish, WA



_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters