Or: How to Bird and Run at the Same Time
(last updated April 2023)
Busy Birder sez who has time to actually stop and LOOK at the little critters? Ears are the way to go. You can jog without your binoculars! But you do have to jog without your ear-buds and pay attention to the world.
Busy Birder also sez he rarely stops to check his identifications visually, so take everything below with a hefty dash of salt. Learning bird sounds is also a very long-term pursuit he doubts he will ever come close to mastering. He will often hear little chirps and ticks, ask himself what is he hearing, and tell himself “Oh, just some birds” and leave it at that–happily.
That said, I can’t think of any pursuit that goes better with running than listening to birds. It will force you to pay close attention to the world around you. It will give you small problems to contemplate and mull over, a bit of distraction that fits well with what you are doing. You’ll get better attuned to the small feathery wonders all around you. You’ll have fillips of satisfaction as pieces of the sound puzzle of your surroundings fall into place.
You will come to treat the sounds in a way similar to how you are meant to treat the thoughts that bubble up in sitting meditation: You acknowledge the sound, you contemplate its qualities, then you identify it and dismiss it and move on. Not that you can count on the birds to be making interesting noises for you always; there are several long months each year when birds tend to shut up. But they will generally give you something to think about. And in spring they can be so rich and effusive you’ll feel giddy to the point of going mad.
How to Begin
Start with a sound you are curious about. What’s that loud, plunging dive-bomb of a song I’m hearing outside my window in the mornings and on my run? Actually, in this case I see the bird perched on a Don’t Walk sign – it’s red and it’s a cardinal. But I can go on the website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds, listen to a cardinal, and double check.
Or I can pull out my phone, swipe up Cornell Lab’s Merlin bird ID software, hit record, and it will quickly tell me exactly what I’m hearing. This has two problems if I’m running. First, it requires me to stop running. Second, it requires me to run with my phone, which I am loath to do for a hundred different reasons.
I also think if you don’t have access to Merlin you will be forced to pay closer attention to what you’re listening to and you’ll really memorize it. The trick is to focus attention to one distinct bird song or call at a time, then go figure out who the culprit is once back home. Play sound clips of suspect birds until you find a match—Cornell Ornithology is perfect. Eventually you’ll probably catch a glimpse of the bird to confirm your identification.
If you have a sound in your head and do not know where to start, go to crowd-sourced E-bird, find a recent sighting list for your area, and just play the clips of what species are around. Searching through birdsongs is especially soothing if you do it at a high-stress job that you hate and are meant to be doing something else.
All this is a lot of work compared to pulling up Merlin, which is so good at what it does you may feel there’s no point to learning bird songs in the first place–it’s an antiquated parlor trick up their with dead reckoning and rubbing sticks together to start a fire. Merlin generally floors me every time I use it. But when I do have it with me (never running) I find it becomes more of the focus of my attention than do the actual sounds. It may pick up species I never thought I’d be hearing in a million years, but rarely helps me learn to identify them afterwards. That said, it is enormously useful in correcting guesses and confirming suspicions. And in learning what is actually out there.
Field guides are still useful. Most include phonetic descriptions of songs. These can be helpful, but obviously capture much less of the real deal than a sound clip does. (Do red-tailed hawks really go “cheeeeeerrrr”?) Some of these mnemonics are near perfect, though; white-eyed vireos really do always say “Quick! Pick up a beer!” Over time you will develop personal mnemonics that work for you – for example I think song sparrows basically always say “Drink your TEA! It’s very good for you!” But their songs have a huge amount of variation.
Which leads to the two characteristics of bird sounds that make identifying them not for the faint of heart.
First, some species of birds have songs that allow for a good deal of variation – no two song sparrows sound completely alike, for example, and Carolina wrens can sing songs with phrases that are usually three syllables but sometimes will be rushed into two. You can get angry at birds for having the nerve to sing in a way that’s different from what the books say or what you expect: you have to change the rules a bit and be a little flexible as you go along. Sometimes, it’s really almost the quality of a song that will make you sure of the species – with a little practice, you’ll never miss a white-throated sparrow, for example, even though they’ll sometimes trim what should be an eleven-syllable song down to one note.
The second complication is even more confounding and seems downright unfair: most birds have both songs and calls, and many birds have many different calls – flight calls, alarm calls, chatty calls. So there are infinitely more sounds out there than there are species of birds. It can make you mad that a common species like a chickadee, for example, can have not only one sound everybody knows (chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee) but also a ravishingly gorgeous two-note descending song that is common but you would think way beyond such a diminutive critter. And yes, sometimes you can be left wondering if you’re hearing a phoebe bird, or just a mockingbird imitating a phoebe bird. (Actually, in this case you are likely to find out what’s going on because phoebe birds are birds of earliest spring in New York City, when mockingbirds usually aren’t singing, and a mockingbird that imitates a phoebe isn’t likely to limit himself to mocking a single species –he’ll soon been moving on to something else.)
So it’s a complicated montage of noises out there. Here are some tips for the birds you are likely to hear, at least in and around NYC.
New York City’s “Core Four” Sound-Makers
Let’s skip pigeons and get right down to the birds you are most likely to hear as you go down the street: house sparrows, jays, starlings and robins.
House sparrows are the brown little birds you see everywhere that chirp. Loudly. Usually singularly, although when very excited they’ll bunch a few chirps together. They can chirp very emphatically.
Jays are insistent, pesky squawkers that make lots of different noises. Most frequent beyond their basic “hank!” is what is accurately called their “squeaky clothesline” noise – paired “chink chink’s” that sound exactly like two tugs on a clothesline that needs oil. They can be spot-on imitators, especially of red-tailed hawks. One outside my house had me looking around for a hawk for days. In winter they can account for most of the bird noises that you hear.
Starlings are responsible for the bubbly, almost electric crackling sounds and whistles you hear as you walk down the street. They are fabulously ugly little birds that everybody hates. They can gather into huge swarms – having one of these buzz you as you are running is like being overtaken by a stampede. (Full disclosure: A distant ancient relative is the idiot who introduced starlings into North America.)
Robins are goofy birds that happen to be thrushes, so therefore are excellent, if kooky, singers. No bird contributes more joy to New York than the robin does. Robins are crazy. Usually they’ll sing for a few weeks in spring, but sometimes a lone robin will start belting it out in the middle of winter for no apparent reason other than it’s a beautiful day in the middle of winter. Their songs are too all over the place to be really beautiful, but always they sound happy and optimistic (except maybe in late winter, when one bird noise you’ll hear all over is there sort of “Tech! woo woo woo!” alarm calls. Several other birds are said to have “a robin-like song,” which is of no help if you don’t know what a robin’s song sounds like. They make all sorts of sounds. In New York robins own very early spring as if they enjoy some sort of first mover advantage: they’re everywhere, as are their noises and songs.
Additional Heavy Hitters
These aren’t quite as all over the place, but they also border on being abundant in New York.
Cardinals are brassy in many ways, not the least their loud descending songs that sound like bombs whistling down from the sky, before breaking up into a jumpy series of chirps. In winter you’ll hear them tit! insistently—tight little snaps—as they search for food in the parks.
A southern bird, mockingbirds have taken over the city in a big way as the climate warms. These birds string together the songs of other birds into loud, repetitive epics that wander all over the place. They’ll sing at night, and you’ll be tempted to shoot the damn things – especially if they happen to pick up the song of the North American car alarm. The males are very territorial, and often their favorite note is an angry hiss. I’ve seen them chase terrified squirrels down telephone lines (not in New York). They are the only bird that has actually dived and fluttered against my back when I’ve unknowingly strayed too close to something very important to it.
Catbirds have two important sounds—their mewing, which can sound more like a cat throwing up than a cat meowing, and then their demented late spring songs. In June, the latter fill the air—they’re like mockingbirds that don’t quite have the memories to mock, sort of mimics with dementia. Or think mockingbirds with lobotomies. Note they arrive in the city en mass and also leave the city en mass, sometime in October. They eat insects, so will not be found in New York City in cold weather. You may still hear catbird-like sounds during winter; these most commonly turn out to be jays or mockingbirds, in my experience.
Song sparrows are tiny things that seem to be all throat and that throw their entire beings into their sounds, which they appear very proud of and will launch into most any time of year. Again, no two song sparrows sound exactly alike, but, as mentioned, I think they all rift on the phrase “drink your TEA! It’s very good for you.” What really identifies them is their unmatched enthusiasm.
Mourning doves are very common but most often heard on quiet mornings – their slow, throbbing cooing is nice, but even better is the little squeaks of their wings as they alight.
Also Steady Reliables in the Right Time and Place
Chickadees noodle about in the woods pretty much all year. I associated their clear, mournful two-note calls with clear, cold, late winter mornings.
Enormous eyed tufted titmice also like woods and seem more common in winter, when they’ll boom with a clear, whistle-like peter! peter peter’s!, which are often just “peet’s” (usually in bursts of three) and in New York are really “Jeter! Jeter! Jeter’s!” They’ll also make sort of a whiny harmonica-like sound that’s followed by high pitched tits.
Downy woodpeckers sometimes make their little pick! pick! calls, before they find another place to slam their cute little heads into a tree trunk. Hairy woodpeckers are a bit less common, bigger and go more “peek! peek!” Red-bellied woodpeckers have become a dime a dozen and sometimes make themselves known with their loud, distinct k-r-r-r-r’s, although more frequently you’ll hear their little, wisecracking “wehh, wehh, wehh’s,” which usually come in threes. Flickers, another kind of woodpecker, can seem very common in late winter/early spring when their loud “kews! Kews!” are all over the place, a noise you’d expect more from a hawk. Less frequently heard are their calls that are sort of a bubbly whir of noise like it is trying to sing with marbles in its throat—generally referred to as their “wicka wicka” call. Finally, occasionally you can get lucky in the woodpecker department and hear the distinctive squeaky-toy “bleh!” of a yellow-bellied sapsucker, though more often than not it turns out you’re just hearing a squeaking toy being tossed to a dog.
Red-winged blackbirds are common around any kind of water once spring gets going, especially anywhere with reeds and a touch of swamp. Here they will “plunk!” and “konkeREE” with abandon.
Another kind of blackbird is the grackle, the mid-sized model of the blackbird line that is bigger than a starling but smaller than a crow. They make electric blackbird noises as they noodle around garbage left in parks especially after barbecues. You don’t see them much in winter.
Yellow warblers are one warbler that sticks around well into summer. They have songs that are a fast, almost frantic “sweet sweet sweet sweeter than sweet!”; other birds have similar songs, but the birds are much less common. Yellow warblers are so common you’ll actually see them—making mad dashes that flash yellow between branches in late spring and into summer.
Goldfinches scatter distinctive “potato chip!” calls as they bound through the air, chattering to each other. It is a dominant sound outside of woods in late summer, at least outside the city.
When you hear white throated sparrows you know it’s either winter or almost winter. It’s one song we grew up with as kids – “old man Peabody Peabody Peabody!” (as if the white throated sparrows all went to Groton). Frequently, this gets shortened to the more concise and truthful “Old men pee!”
Juncos are also a fall and winter bird, and this one you’ll see as much as hear: they may be dark and small, but have they two distinctive white tail feathers they like to flash like a catcher giving a sign. They make loose, jingling and tutting noises as they fly around, and do have a jingly, trilling song like a chipping sparrow.
Carolina wrens are becoming more and more common, and you can hear their loud pure whistle “jiminy jiminy jiminy” pretty much any time, any place. Its song is so amazingly loud it is another bird that will get people interested in the wonderful world of bird sounds. Even the same bird will sing a lot of slightly different songs, and some of the “jiminies” will commonly lose a syllable or two. They also have a lippy, descending trill call that is fairly common, enough so you might think it’s another trick of all those jays that will be around, but it’s not.
The arrival of the Baltimore orioles always feels like a major spring event. They distribute themselves evenly if thinly throughout our deciduous terrain, but they stay up high and prefer being heard rather than seen. They have voices that are deeper and bit slower than most birds have– soulful is the word that comes to mind.
You Know ‘Em When You Hear ‘Em, Which Is Only at Certain Times of year, and Even Then You Need Some Luck
Scarlet tanagers come each spring but move on quickly, and hide in the woods. They have “robin-like” songs, although the songs are louder and clearer, more operatic. What really gives them away – their unmistakable “tell” – is the distinct “chick-per” sound they throw in.
Red-eyed vireos you’ll hear in woods well into the summer (especially in woods outside the city). Their songs are like robin songs, but delivered much more pensively, with careful reflection and spacing. They pause between the phrases, as if considering what should come next.
Rose-breasted grosbeaks sound like robins that have a cold. You just come across them in spring.
Indigo buntings are also hard to find in the city, but you will sometimes hear their distinctive song in which they repeat each note (Fire! Fire! Where! Where! Here! Here!), at least in the spring and summer.
Very common in expansive eastern woods in the summer but not so much in the city is the ovenbird, which releases a steadily louder and louder teacher! Teacher! TEACHER! in a way that sounds almost like an insect.
White-eyed vireos like thickets and aren’t around much – but their “Quick! Pick up your beer!” call is a delightful commandment when you do come across it. Note that eastern bluebirds, which I’ve yet to run into in the city proper, can make a similar sound, but generally they mumble as much as sing.
Common yellowthroats are much more common, but I don’t hear them as much as the bird guides suggest I should. They like water and have unmistakable, pensive “witchity witchity witchity” songs.
Warbling vireos for some reason seem to like a particular grove next to a ball field I run by. They have an emphatic circular song that builds to a Rossini-like crescendo that ends with “stronger than dirt!”
House finches are actually listed as abundant around apartment buildings, but I don’t see them much because they blend in with all those other little birds, even if the males do have a reddish wash. You know they’re around when you hear their insistent, somehow thoughtful, quite articulated songs. For years I’d hear them where I live, but never actually saw one here until one was sitting outside my window singing contently one morning.
House wrens will hang out in a chosen location for a while, happily chattering and bubbling away in a song that slides all over the place. But hard to know where you’re going to come across such a chosen location. Winter wrens launch on similar springboard eruptions of sound, and you will occasionally come across them in the city – in winter. For a long time they were thought to be a very common species and sound among the big trees in the Pacific Northwest, but those birds are now considered a different species. The song keeps a bit more to one note than do the other wren songs.
Chimney swifts are a background noise of summer: chatty, squeaky sounds from on high. Once you know it, you stop looking up. But if you do it’s a real dog fight — they are universally described as “flying cigars.” They’re eating bugs, so are only around when those are around.
A similar sort of background noise are the sounds of some of the small, wood-favoring birds including the nuthatches. The white-breasted nuthatch has “a-n-n-n-k! a-n-n-n-k! a-n-n-n-k!” song that will carry well in quiet winter mornings, while the red-breasted nuthatch has a similar, but more quacky song, which is one of the defining sounds of summer in coniferous woods north of New York, such as in Maine. For some reason it took me a long time to pick up on common sounds of the hyperactive ruby-crowned kinglet, the song a very high pitched whistles that slides down and explodes into some wren-like chatter. Its “di-git” two-syllable call is also distinct.
A flock of cedar waxwings will bring high-pitch throbbing chatter when the berries of local bushes are right—seems to be in fall.
Wood thrushes are a common bird of the woods in spring and summer; their songs go something “look at ME! Way up in the TREE! Happy Happy happy!,” with the a trill at the end of each phrase. Other thrushes (outside of robins) will pass through in the spring but are much less common. A veery has a beautiful song that circles downward. A Swainson’s thrush has a rolling song, too, but it rises. A hermit thrush has a song that begins with a long, drawn out note, with notes that follow that seem somehow to echo and swirl around it – gorgeous. The next drawn-out note will be at a different pitch.
Not nearly as sublime and indeed ridiculous are the vocal antics of the brown thrasher, sort of a crazed mockingbird that throws out random sounds for hours at time — but always in pairs. You will know if one of these is in your back yard.
In the woods towhees order you to “Drink your TEA!” Phoebes come very early in spring and say their names very insistently, with an emphatic attention-grabbing PHEE first syllable. Mockingbirds love to imitate them, so you’ll hear this song long after the phoebes have moved on to greener pastures. Wood Pewees are pretty common in woods throughout spring and summer and proclaim their names in a drawly, ponderous fashion.
Fish crows are much less common than regular crows—but it’s easy to know it’s them because they have calls that sound like plastic-hammer squeaky toys very similar to the call of the European magpie. Regular crows caw, of course. Ravens are significantly heftier and need a lot of space. I’ve seen them in the Palisades across from the George Washington Bridge, occasionally heard one in the Bronx, and supposedly they’ve gotten down to 34th Street, or something like that. Their calls are louder, deeper and much more raspy than those of a crow, a croak a bit like a sofar. Ravens don’t caw, they really saw hawk! (Listen to the initial consonant.) But this is just the beginning. Often they’ll start talking among themselves with various pops and plops — it sounds like a human click language.
I do not spend much time figuring out water and shore birds. Ducks quack. Canadian geese honk, although they’ll hiss if you get too close to their goslings. Sometimes on ponds I’ll glimpse egrets and swans. I do not worry about what kind of seagull I’m seeing. Very occasionally running along the Palisades I’ll hear the deep, loud angry squawks of a great blue heron I’ve surprised; more often I’ll see one perched on a sewer pipe below the Metro North station at Spuytan Duyval. Another bird of the shore is the fish hawk or osprey; these have insistent chirps that rise in intensity and let you know they are not happy you are around. I’ll come across them most often coming through the city in the fall, although one unhappy couple did nest in a cell tower next to the Sawmill River Parkway up in Dobbs Ferry. They were not allowed to do that for very long.
Red-tailed hawks are New York City’s tough guy birds, burly grayish hulks when perched and menacing fat-winged angels of death when gliding and circling. You’ll often hear the high, squeaky whinny of their flight calls without being able to spot the actual bird, especially if you are inside and sitting at a desk. They have loud, screechy calls that sound just the way a hawk should sound – the call is regularly used in truck commercials, and has been dubbed in for the verbally challenged bald eagle, which have pathetic whinny of a call that is most unsatisfying, although distinct. (These will deign to visit the city only occasionally –in fall and more often winter—usually sticking to the waterways and getting no further than a periphery park or two. I will see them circling over the Hudson from my home office window. I have also twice come across them just sitting in a tree on parks along the Hudson – the same number of times I’ve come across dead human bodies.) I’ve occasionally been able to identify the less common hawks I’ve come across in city parks strictly by their calls. Broad-winged hawks are even more vocally challenged than eagles–their calls are rather pathetic tee-heeee’s. A Cooper’s hawk has a most satisfying, steady-stream “ha ha ha ha!” cackle–slightly ominous and just exactly how a hawk should sound, while a red-shouldered hawk makes a loud mewing sound quite like a cat.
The spring warblers that pass through New York in droves will be impossible to master, at times feel overwhelming if you try to tease out their sounds at all, but also come with a few “gimmies” on which you can quickly come up to speed. I’ve gotten to the point I can recognize the most common songs, but will forget which bird sings which and have to give myself a refresher course each spring. And I’ll usually tack on another song or two to the list of what I recognize each year. Start with the easy, abundant ones. Northern parulas will be everywhere for a couple of days; they sound exactly like the ascending piccolo at the end of Beethoven’s fifth. Yellow-rumped warblers have a sort of a jingly sound. Black-and-white warblers make slightly see-sawing deet-de-deet-de-deet-de-deet sounds, while the less common Blackpole warblers release a string of soft little tit tit tit tit sounds. Black-throated green warblers go “zoo-ZEE—zoo-zoo-zee” while black-throated blue ones go a slow, questioning “zoo-zoo-ZEE?” Blue-winged warblers just make a slow, rather humorous “ZEE-blat,” a bit as if they were settling down on a whoopy cushion very slowly. Then of course there are the busy little redstarts, which have an emphatic, in-your-face song with a lot of variety but which comes with the “tell” of often going “achoo! achoo!”. I will also hear the rapid, soft chips of the pine warbler, which surge a bit and are fuzzier than the remarkably even rapid fire of the chipping sparrow, a sound like cards being competently rifled together in a shuffle. In areas outside the city I frequently hear hooded warblers, which have a “sweet sweet” song like a yellow warbler, but in this case add an emphatic “fuck you!” at the end, and prairie warblers, which have a song similar that of a field sparrow (a dropped poker chip bouncing to a halt) but which is more of a whistle, with a pitch that distinctly rises at the end.
The song I’m a looking forward to hearing one day, but haven’t yet, is that of the elusive willow flycatcher: an emphatic wolf whistle.
This is just a beginning. Have fun! One spring I’ll decide I’m just not up to the task of figuring out all those songs, but that will also be the spring I know the end is near. Or deserves to be.