You’re out birding, walking through
the quiet wilderness, and you start to daydream. You wander along, aware of
where you’re going but not paying serious attention. Maybe you’re thinking of
what you’ll eat for lunch, or about something that happened the day before.
Right in the middle of your daydream, you hear a loud *cheep* from the bushes. Startled,
you look to where you think the sound came from, but you aren’t really sure
where to look. You think that the call sounded like the bird you’re looking,
but you’re not positive, and so you spend the next 10 minutes standing there,
desperately hoping that whatever made that noise will make it again.
Welcome
to the world of amateur birders, a world that I have cautiously explored in the Bernard Field Station in Claremont,
CA, over the past few weeks. I am performing surveys in four different habitats
in order to try and determine whether the abundance of the spotted towhee
(Pipilo maculatus) and the California
towhee (Melozone crissalis)
is significantly different in these different environments, or even in the
field station as a whole. Despite their distinct appearances, these birds have
very similar foraging habits and habitats, but the extent of their ranges is
very different. Thus, it is interesting to look at their distribution in these
habitats that constitute the middle of the range of these towhees.
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Spotted towhee
|
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| California towhee |
When I decided to do this project,
I was pretty confident in my birding ability. Sure I hadn’t (ever) really been
birding by myself, but I figured it wouldn’t be too hard. My dad did several Audubon
Christmas Bird Counts, and therefore I had been on many a bird count during
my childhood. Sure I had mostly been the data recorder and bird spotter rather
than bird identifier, but the towhees looked really different and sounded
really different, and I was confident I could tell them apart. How hard could
it be?
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| Alluvial fan sage scrub habitat |
As it turns out, looking for two species
of birds while birding is eminently doable, but definitely harder than
expected. I hadn’t considered just how many other birds are out calling in the
field station, let alone all the other noises from animals and random things. A
rabbit hopping or a lizard sprinting through the brush sound like possible
foraging towhees, and all kinds of noises are produced when a group of sixth
graders have an interactive class while I am performing my surveys. Also, while
it is true that spotted and California towhees are very distinct from each
other, surprise there happen to be several birds in the field station that
sound very similar to them. The main problem that I have is distinguishing the
calls of wrentits
and California towhees, for they sound very similar.
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| Riparian live oak forest habitat |
While sitting in my dorm room it
is easy enough to distinguish these calls, but it is definitely a different
experience out in the field. The situation described above of me standing
around hoping and hoping a bird will call again has definitely happened
multiple times, and I’m sure will happen tomorrow when I go out for my last
surveys. It is difficult to be in the field trying to identify bird calls without having another person with whom you can check
your opinions, but I try to think of it as a learning experience and a way for me to really improve my fieldwork and bird identification skills. It helps
that even though I have only gone out by myself a few times over the course of the project, I feel more and
more confident in my identifications each time.
So
if you’re out birding and aren’t quite sure what you just heard, be patient and
don’t berate yourself - it’s just part of the fun.
Media Credits
Spotted towhee by Sandy Paiement:
California towhee by Linda Tanner:
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