Sometimes we identify birds by sight. Sometimes we use other clues. Bird calls are an important identifier. Sometimes calls are the only way to tell two closely related birds apart. Sometimes the call is the only clue we get. But there are different kinds of calls. There are songs, calls, chip notes…
Guidebooks will describe the standard song and the standard call. If you’re not totally familiar with a bird, though, it’s hard to translate a written description into what your ear hears.
Our birding software will play the song of each bird for us. That’s better, but that’s only the song. The song is a great recognition tool in the spring. Birds sing their songs to establish territory and attract mates. By mid-summer, the birds are pretty much through with their songs though. The rest of the year, sometimes birds sit and make a sound over and over that is not a song or a call, just a repetitive note.
Here is a bird sound from a recent walk that is just a repetitive note. It went on and on. I only recorded a little.
Buried in the brush. Never seen. Just heard. I take this to be the call note of a Townsend’s Solitaire. I would describe this sound as a metallic “doink, doink, doink”. The book describes the call note of a Townsend’s Solitaire as a clear soft whistled heeh, though. What do you think? Based on this note, can anyone make the definitive call for me?
