Bird songs and calls

Singing Marsh Wren, Forest Grove, Oregon 2 June 2011 by Greg Gillson.

 

Listen. Do you hear it?

No, because this is a photo without sound. But I hear it in my mind.

Here's a link to a sample song of Marsh Wren.

O, what a quiet world this would be without birds! Well, quiet except for human-made sounds. When we think of the sounds of nature, we usually include the calls of birds.

Many birders have trouble identifying bird songs and calls. No wonder; it takes just as much (or more) work than learning to identify birds by sight. And there isn't a workable "field guide" to bird songs and calls.

However, Nathan Pieplow, on the EarBirding blog, wrote this brief guide to
describing what you hear. He writes "How to identify bird sounds in six easy steps." Great stuff.

This gives a framework for describing bird sounds. Even playing a recording of a bird song doesn't help you remember it, if you can't describe it to yourself--if you can't hear it in your own mind when the bird is no longer singing.

Michele, at Northwest Nature Nut recently recorded 50 seconds of audio at the Ridgefield wildlife refuge, in her post:Ridgefield bird songs of May. How many different bird songs and calls can you pick out? I heard 11 species and in the post's comment field recorded the first time I heard each species and the second count of the recording when it calls, so you can compare. Try it!

At the pond... Marsh Wren

Marsh Wren, Jackson Bottom Wetlands, Hillsboro, Oregon on 5 April 2009 by Greg Gillson.

 


The tiny Marsh Wren creeps mouse-like through the reed canary grass (as above) at your local wetlands. They favor cattail marshes and emergent vegetation, but they don't require much territory--a small cattail puddle along a country road ditch may do. Where the habitat is extensive, their population can be fairly high.

Shy and secretive, they would be very difficult to detect in their soggy habitat if not for their loud spring and summer songs and harsh call notes. The male may crawl up to an exposed tip of grass or wild rose bush to sing their rattling reedy trill.

They also pugnaciously defend their territories from other Marsh Wrens and larger birds, including Red-winged Blackbirds and Yellow-headed Blackbirds--even destroying the eggs of the blackbirds nesting within the wren's territory.

The males may build several to more than a dozen oval "dummy" nests among the marsh vegetation. A single male may also have more than one mate at a time, each female having her own nest. The females guard their own nest against other females, while the males guard their territory (which may include one or more nests) from other males.

The population movements of this species across North America are complex. The same is true in the Pacific Northwest. West of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains, where extended days of sub-zero winter maximum temperatures are rare, these wrens seem to be residents. However, in many areas winter numbers are significantly less than breeding numbers. Coastal marshes tend to have more wintering birds than breeders. East of the Cascades, birds arrive on territory in April and birds remain into September, gradually dropping in numbers. They may winter at favored sites with open water.

So, the next time you are out at your local pond with weedy grasses and cattails poking up above the water, look for this interesting little bird.