{"id":5349,"date":"2017-04-29T15:15:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T21:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=5349"},"modified":"2017-04-30T16:21:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T22:21:14","slug":"unfamiliarity-a-field-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/5349","title":{"rendered":"Unfamiliarity: A Field Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xeno-canto.org\/forum\">xeno-canto forum<\/a>, people frequently post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xeno-canto.org\/mysteries\">unidentified bird sounds<\/a> from all around the world. I can&#8217;t be of much help on the mysteries from Europe or Africa or India, but if I see an unidentified sound posted from North America, I check to see if it&#8217;s something I recognize.<\/p>\n<p>Last year Bates Estabrooks uploaded an odd call he&#8217;d recorded in Tennessee. It didn&#8217;t exactly resemble anything I&#8217;d heard before, but I told him it was probably a Tufted Titmouse. Several other people on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xeno-canto.org\/forum\/topic\/14697\">forum thread<\/a> agreed. Here&#8217;s the sound:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.xeno-canto.org\/310945\/embed\" width=\"340\" height=\"220\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bates wrote back with a perfectly legitimate question: what made it a Tufted Titmouse? If it didn&#8217;t exactly resemble anything I&#8217;d heard before, how could I be sure?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I told him:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s simultaneously pretty simple, and frustratingly difficult. Here&#8217;s the reasoning I used:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It&#8217;s very high-pitched (almost entirely above 6 kHz).<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s medium-complex (2-syllabled).<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve never heard anything quite like it (i.e., it doesn&#8217;t fit for any of the other birds that regularly give very high, 2-syllabled calls, like Brown Creeper or Golden-crowned Kinglet).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never heard anything quite like it&#8221; is actually an excellent field mark for Tufted Titmouse (and a couple other species, such as Blue Jay). The frustrating part is that it takes time to get to the level of experience where this field mark is helpful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When it comes to identifying bird sounds, <strong>unfamiliarity can actually be a very useful mark<\/strong>. Of course, it becomes more useful as you learn more bird sounds (and can therefore rule them out). The legendary Ted Parker knew almost all the bird sounds in the Western Hemisphere &#8212; so when he heard something unfamiliar in a tape from Bolivia, he postulated that it must be a species new to science (and it appears he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artdata.slu.se\/FaunaochFlora\/pdf\/faunaochflora_1_2011_Parker.pdf\">probably correct<\/a>). Most of us are never going to arrive at this level, of course.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5353\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5353\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5353\" src=\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson-300x261.jpg\" alt=\"Unfamiliarity can be a visual field mark too. Never seen a hawk quite like this before? It's probably a Red-tail. (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)\" width=\"300\" height=\"261\" srcset=\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson-300x261.jpg 300w, http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson-768x669.jpg 768w, http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson-1024x892.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson-310x270.jpg 310w, http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/RTHA_SteveJurvetson.jpg 1967w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5353\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Unfamiliarity can be a visual field mark too. Never seen a hawk quite like it before? It&#8217;s probably a Red-tail. (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Note that I&#8217;m not talking about <em>unpredictability<\/em>, which is a field mark for mockingbirds, thrashers, catbirds, or Yellow-breasted Chats. Unpredictability is different from unfamiliarity. Unpredictable birds might sing unfamiliar notes or phrases, but then they quickly move on to another type of sound. I&#8217;m talking about birds that repeat the same unfamiliar sound over and over.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a young birder in eastern South Dakota, I soon realized that most weird, unfamiliar bird sounds came from <strong>Northern Cardinals<\/strong>. When I moved to Massachusetts for college, I learned to bet on <strong>Tufted Titmouse<\/strong> as the source of a wacky sound. In graduate school in western Oregon, the vocal tricksters were <strong>Hutton&#8217;s Vireo<\/strong> and <strong>Bewick&#8217;s Wren<\/strong>. And of course, two other consistently unfamiliar birds are <strong>Blue Jay<\/strong> (especially in the wide variety of so-called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.xeno-canto.org\/179708\">pumphandle calls<\/a>&#8220;) and <strong>Red-winged Blackbird<\/strong> (especially the many whistled variations of the <a href=\"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/3849\">alert calls<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m curious about other people&#8217;s experiences. What birds have you learned to identify by their unfamiliarity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to identifying bird sounds, unfamiliarity can actually be a very useful mark.<\/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-5349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349","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=5349"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5360,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions\/5360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}