In late April 2012, Roy Halpin found and photographed an entirely buff-colored Cattle Egret in Saint Augustine, Florida. This is a particularly interesting bird because it provides an opportunity to consider the unusual nature of Cattle Egret coloration, as well as the identification of Cattle Egret subspecies. Coloration in Cattle Egrets To understand this bird’s […]
An unusual Cattle Egret in Florida Read More »
The next part of my introduction to learning bird songs is now up (click here). Birds can hear a lot “faster” than we can, however, and consequently can extract a lot more information from the very rapid series of notes. The differences are there, and a Chipping Sparrow does not get confused by the songs
Bird Song ID series continues – Eastern Trills Read More »
Part 5 of my introduction to learning bird songs is now up (click here). Many of the words that we use to describe the quality of a bird song also carry information about pitch and tempo. For example, only sounds in a certain pitch range can be described as whistled, and we tend to call
Bird songs Part 5: Describing Quality Read More »
Part 4 of my introduction to learning bird songs is now up (click here). In the narrowest sense, the quality of a bird’s voice would refer strictly to the tonal quality of the sound. Musicians call this “timbre”, and it allows us to distinguish a trumpet from a violin from a flute, even when all
Part 4: Understanding Quality in bird song Read More »
Part 3 of my introduction to learning bird songs is now up (click here). In this discussion, tempo refers to the overall “pace” of the song, the number of notes or phrases per second. We describe this as fast or slow, and over the course of the whole song the tempo can be steady or
Tempo, and bird song identification Read More »
Pitch is simply our perception of the frequency (or wavelength) of a sound, which we describe as high to low. Birds’ range of hearing is similar to our own, and bird song covers the full range to the limits of human hearing, from the lowest hooting sounds of Great Gray Owl or Spruce Grouse to
Pitch, and bird song identification Read More »
The first post in a new series on identifying birds by sound: To learn bird songs, it is first important just to notice bird sounds. Train yourself to hear them and to hear the differences. Take a minute periodically while you are birding to stop, relax, maybe close your eyes, and just listen. Don’t try
Learning to Listen to Bird Songs Read More »
Molt is the process of feather replacement. All birds do it; they have to grow new feathers once or twice a year to stay warm, dry, and airborne, and in many cases they grow differently colored feathers at different seasons to match their surroundings or to impress others of their species. Among the small songbirds,
The annual plumage cycle of a male American Goldfinch Read More »
The still-unidentified Elaenia, found by Ethan and Aaron Gyllenhaal in Illinois, has provided one of the most exciting and interesting bird identification challenges in recent years. It is either a first North American record of Small-billed Elaenia, or second North American record of White-crested (or third if an earlier record from Florida was White-crested). Both
In praise of mystery Read More »
I was musing on the value of learning bird topography this morning, wondering why it is so important to know the greater coverts and supercilium and all the rest. The easy answer is that it gives us a framework to describe the color patterns of birds, but I think there’s even more to it than
Bird Topography – How it helps identify birds Read More »