Here is the continuation of the article from my column in our community newspaper I posted 2 weeks ago. If you are in or around Port Alfred, please support Talk of the Town and buy a copy. Enjoy! CALLING ALL BIRDERS! (part 2) Hello everybody! Today, as promised, we are continuing from where we left off last week. Just to reboot some memories out there, I’ll recap for you. Just before I signed off, I was talking about how learning bird calls can help you identify those birds that are not at all easy to tell apart by sight alone. Larks, Cisticolas and Pipits can cause many ruffled feathers among birders, but knowing the calls can greatly assist in identification. But friends, beware! What is good for one bird can also be good for another, and many times species can look very different, but sound very much the same! That’s right – if a bird can’t baffle you by sight, then it can most certainly confuse the connection between your ears and brain, especially if you are a beginner! Examples for the area where I live are the “Seeeuuu” of the Grey Cuckooshrike, the Southern Double-collared Sunbird and the African Dusky Flycatcher, or the trilling contact call of the Collared Sunbird versus the alarm trills of the Cape White-eye. It is not easy when these birds are hidden. Another trick that these birds have up their sleeves is to produce such a wide vocabulary of sounds, that the listener will think he/she is listening to 10 different species, when in actual fact it is just one bird making all those calls! The Olive Bush Shrike and Southern Boubou are just two such culprits that play this game. Now, my birding buddies, please do NOT be discouraged, as there IS a positive side to all of this. You can use it all as an opportunity for a challenge to get to know your calls better. Once you have mastered the art of separating similar sounding then I believe you can master anything in the world of birding. I just want you to ENJOY God’s talented musicians of nature. There is so much to be appreciated, and in my area alone I am able to hear some of the finest songsters around. Some examples are: Knysna Warbler, Cape Rock Thrush, Bokmakierie and of course, the various species of Robin. The most common species of Robin in our area are: Cape Robin-chat, White-browed Scrub Robin, Brown Scrub-Robin and Chorister Robin-chat. It is the Chorister that is most famous for being an accomplished mimic, and anyone about to report an African Crowned Eagle calling from the undergrowth, a Fiery-necked Nightjar singing in broad daylight, or even a Black Cuckoo calling in June, has most likely been deceived by this copycat. However, this Robin is often caught out when he incorporates snippets of his own song into his medley of mimicry. Other birds that mimic have been covered in this column before – Black-bellied Starling, Mocking Cliff-Chat and many others yet to be featured here. One last thing that I find interesting, is the way many calls have been adopted as names for the birds. Take the Hoopoe, for example. The call and the name are one and the same. In Afrikaans, the Red-chested Cuckoo is “Piet-my-Vrou”, another accurate description. If any of you feather-heads out there know the voice of the Red-faced Mousebird, then you should have no trouble in remembering its Zulu name. “umTshivovo” as that is exactly what it sounds like. So, there you have it. Bird listening can be just as much fun as bird watching. Until next time, enjoy some of the best music composed or performed. Live shows are free of charge!
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 18:11:03 +0000
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