The call of the wild...

I was continuing my train of thought about the difficulties the solitary patcher faces when trying to convince the unconvinced about birds seen on the patch and it struck me that I’ve just exposed the tip of the iceberg. If adequately describing what a bird actually looked like (as opposed to retrospectively reconstructing it from a fleeting mental image and a copy of the BWP) can be tricky (see previous blog), then trying to add meat to the bone by describing what it SOUNDED like is even trickier!!! We enter, dear reader, the world of MNEMONICS.

Now we all recognise some ‘written down’ versions of bird calls and songs; ‘like a cork being popped out of a Champagne bottle and its contents being poured' (Capercaillie), the ‘Wet-my-lips’ of Quail, the 'Whip-poor-will' of… well, Whippoorwill, the ‘boom’ of the Bittern, the ‘smidgen of wholemeal and forget the gorgonzola’ of Yellowhammer all work reasonably well. The onomatopoeic call of the Cuckoo and Curlew, likewise… Others achieve some level of recognition by being easily rendered in text… like the ‘keebeek’ of Oystercatcher or the ‘poo-yip’ of Ringed Plover. Add a little description and more species fall into place… the soft ‘tok tok’ of drake Shoveler, or the 'dry rasping burb' of Gadwall might be examples. But then it gets tricky because you either have to go overboard trying to describe each syllable uttered (e.g. chip-chupitty-swee-ditchety Canada Warbler) or abandon this largely futile act and start describing the call or song using adjectives only.

This requires a lot of thought. I personally don’t find ‘loud repeated call’ a very useful description of Pileated Woodpecker, at least not by way of discriminating it from anything else – I mean, I make loud repeated calls all the time and last time I checked I was not clinging to the trunk of a tree in the eastern United States! Some descriptions I’ve come across are not only unhelpful, but quite scary. Take, for example, ‘unearthly slide whistle’ Jeeezus! I’d run a mile if I heard that, forget ticking the Upland Sandpiper! Or how about ‘HORRENDOUS, panther-like scream’ I have no idea what a panther’s scream sounds like, nor do I particularly want to hear it thank you very much, so the Yellow-crowned Night Heron would also have to go begging! Thankfully though, the need for such terrifying renditions seems unnecessary in our tranquil part of the birding world, but the problem is still there. How does one describe the sound of the bird that’s just flown over head or that is hidden in a thicket singing away?

Well, I guess you begin with the sort of noise it’s making…

Quack, Squawk, Honk, Trumpet, Whistle, Squeal, Bark, Cough, Grunt, Cluck, Croak, Warble, Chatter, Purr.

Then add some simple adjectives…

High, Low, Soft, Loud, Short, Long

…and maybe some indication of the ‘direction’ the note(s) is/are going…

upslurred, downslurred, ascending, descending

Now that alone will give you 336 combinations, although not many are very useful descriptively… e.g. long, upslurred, cough… nor are they probably applicable to many of the species we hear over here. What to do? Answer: add more colour. Here are a few in common use…

Rattling, Scratchy, Melodic, Flutey, Reeling, Rasping, Buzzy, Bubbling, Liquid, Apologetic, Scolding, Dry, Harsh, Petulant, Metallic, Wooden, Explosive, Plaintive, Melancholly, Nasal, Strident, Booming, Clipped, Resonant, Gutteral, Thin, Hoarse, Rhythmic, Excited, Wheezy, Insistent, Repeated, Musical.

You can even mix and match quite effectively…

'Dry, rasping chur'… 'Plaintive, nasal, tsvip'…'Excited, rhythmic booming' - Oo Er Missus! OK, may not SOUND like anything you’ve heard, but it’s quite fun mucking around with the possibilities! You could even throw in a kind of wine-tasters vocab for good measure just to confuse the rarities committee… 'Yeasty, vibrant warble'… 'Full-bodied, guttural honk'… 'Unctuous flutey wheeze (with a hint of raspberry)'... ‘a rather pleasing ditty with an elegant sonic bouquet’. Go on – I dare you!!! Now, such mnemonic mellifluence may… just may... convey the flavour of a SONG to a birding jury, enough at least for them to get a feel for whether it ‘fits’ the bird you are describing or not, but CALLS? Whole new ballgame!

An example: Four birders standing in different corners of a large copse hear a bird fly over on a misty morning. None of them SEE what made the call, but manage to write down what the call sounded like; Birder 1 ‘chip’; Birder 2 ‘tsip’. Birder 3 ‘chik’; Birder 4 ‘peek’.

Question 1: Did they all hear the same bird?

Question 2: If so, what was it and if not, what were they?

Answers on a postcard please…

How about… Bweet, Cweet, Dweet, Fweet, Gweet, Pweet and Tweet? Renditions of one species or of seven species?

How on earth are you supposed to decide???

'Chit' and it’s a Yellowhammer (or maybe Corn Bunting)… quick flick of the pen on the letter ‘T’ and you’ve got a letter ‘P’… 'chip'… now it’s a Crossbill (or maybe Tree Sparrow). Doh!

I give up! Think I can forget about my patch Richard’s Pipit flyover bein accepted...

‘Schriiip?!’