{"id":3204,"date":"2011-08-31T23:38:54","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T05:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=3204"},"modified":"2016-11-25T08:08:44","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:08:44","slug":"hummingbirds-by-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/3204","title":{"rendered":"Hummingbirds by Ear"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Female Blue-throated Hummingbirds may be easier to distinguish from Magnificent Hummingbirds by sound than by sight. Photo by Jerry Oldenettel (Creative Commons 2.0). <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 Western Field Ornithologists’ Conference<\/a> in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where the highlight of my trip was the opportunity to view and record huge numbers of hummingbirds.\u00a0 At our first stop, Beatty’s Guest Ranch<\/a> in Miller Canyon, the legendary row of 15+ feeders was a blur of wings, with at least three or four dozen hummingbirds in view at any given moment, and others whizzing in and out at all times.\u00a0 It took mere moments to rack up a species list that included Magnificent, Black-chinned, Anna’s, Rufous, and Broad-tailed, Violet-crowned, and Broad-billed Hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

Shortly, however, it became clear that the huge numbers of hummingbirds were both a blessing and a curse.\u00a0 For one thing, it meant that the number of difficult-to-identify females and immatures was immense.\u00a0 For another thing, it turned rarity-spotting into a search for a hyperactive needle inside a speedy, swarming haystack.<\/p>\n

A few minutes into our field trip, one of the leaders, the eminent Kimball Garrett, called out “Blue-throated Hummingbird!”<\/p>\n

“Where?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Didn’t see it,” he replied.\u00a0 “Only heard it.”<\/p>\n

And then I was able to hear it too: a high-pitched, clear, brief, piping whistle, totally different from the chips, chirps, sputters and buzzes coming from the rest of the hummingbird crowd:<\/p>\n

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Blue-throated Hummingbird calls, Cochise County, AZ, 8\/19\/2011.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/BLUHc-NDP2011-07-07b.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

With my ears more fully open, I began to listen to the other species, and I realized that their vocalizations were distinctive too.\u00a0 In fact, within minutes, I could identify each hummingbird to genus (and therefore usually to species as well) just by hearing it call.\u00a0 After I had mastered the Blue-throated’s unmistakeable “seek!”, the next sound I learned to pick out was the strong, sharp “chip” of the Magnificent, which sounded to me more like the “tewp” call of a Black or Eastern Phoebe than like a hummingbird:<\/p>\n

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Magnificent Hummingbird calls, Cochise County, AZ, 8\/19\/2011.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/MAHUc-NDP2011-07-09b.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The calls of the Broad-billed Hummingbirds were also instantly recognizable: noisy “chit” and “chittit” notes, much like the calls of a Ruby-crowned Kinglet:<\/p>\n

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Broad-billed Hummingbird calls, Pima County, AZ, 5\/13\/2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/BBLHc-NDP2009-13-08.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The Black-chinneds took a little more practice to pick out, but their calls were distinctive too, a slightly more nasal version of the standard hummingbird “chip,” reminiscent of tennis shoes on a gym floor:<\/p>\n

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Black-chinned Hummingbird calls, Pima County, AZ, 5\/13\/2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/BCHUc-NDP2009-12-47.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The genus Selasphorus<\/em>, meanwhile, which includes Rufous, Allen’s, and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, tended to give itself away by mixing short electric buzzes with other sounds (a variety of chips and twitters, plus the musical trills of the males’ wings):<\/p>\n

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Broad-tailed Hummingbird chips, buzzes, and wing trill (in background at about 6 kHz). Larimer County, CO, 5\/20\/2008.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/BTLHchitter-NDP2008-22-04.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n
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Allen's Hummingbird buzzes and chips, Orange County, CA, 3\/21\/2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/ALHUbuzz2c-NDP2009-04-66.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

And the Violet-crowned Hummingbirds could be identified by their quiet, smacking “tik” notes, so brief that they barely show up on the spectrogram as hair-thin vertical lines:<\/p>\n

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Violet-crowned Hummingbird calls, Cochise County, AZ, 8\/19\/2011.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nhttp:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/VCHUc-NDP2011-07-06.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

With all these species shooting by at once, it only took me a short time to learn which was which, and arm myself with an identification tool of enormous power.\u00a0 “Black-chinned,” I’d find myself saying, even before the drab female hummingbird came out from behind the bush, much less landed on the feeder for binocular views.\u00a0 Suddenly I was performing feats of identification that had seemed like magic when Kimball Garrett did them a few minutes previously.\u00a0 And all it took was a little ear training!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 Western Field Ornithologists’ Conference in Sierra Vista, Arizona, where the highlight of my trip was the opportunity to view and record huge numbers of hummingbirds. It only took me a short time to learn their vocalizations and arm myself with an identification tool of enormous power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3204"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5047,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions\/5047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}