APPENDIX B
LEARNING YOSEMITE BIRDS, BY BERT HARWELL

An Audiotape transcribed by Marie Herold

Transcribed by Marie HeroldThis is Bert Harwell speaking on the subject, Yosemite birds. I call it “Learning Yosemite Birds by Ear.” Now birds speak, or sing, especially to their own kind. To avoid confusion, they’ve developed a lot of songs and calls differing from all others. So if you listen a while, you can learn to know birds by their voices.
Surely you have heard this [imitates bird calls]. In the nighttime, when you’ve been camping, haven’t you heard [bird call] or maybe an answer [bird call]? But which birds are these? They are far from being alike. You notice that. They differ in the pitch, in the quality, and in length of song. And they differ in volume and several other ways.
Pitch is important, especially to birds, because birds can hear better at the level of their own voices. So, I’d like to start with some low voices of birds and move right on up to the highest we can whistle, or sometimes I’d like to be able to get it up as high as you can hear. You get up here [whistles]; that’s the highest note on your piano. It vibrates 496,000 times a second. It’s high! [whistles]
If you play violin, ever, that will be high in your harmonics. Now, I’m speaking here—if you touch the piano, you notice I’m speaking on C, because men generally speak right about here. And so does a grouse speak there when he says [imitates grouse] words. I don’t know if they’re words or maybe a sentence. You can practically hear a whole paragraph out of a book that he’s saying. That’s the male. It’s a pseudo grouse, you know. We call it the Sierra grouse. That’s male, because the female—all she says is [short hoots].
When the little chickens are hatched, the little chicks go around, they peep like our little chicks and say [imitates chicks]. So what a happy family! The father says [imitating various calls], the mother says—and the little babies say [missing] other birds of course.
But in the mountains here, sometimes you hear a great grey owl in the night. It’s the largest owl on this continent, and rare in the United States, but they nest in Yosemite. Sometimes you see them in the daytime, and they say just one word, right where I speak, just one “Whoo.” Of course they’ll repeat that several times.
If you ever find a nest and you’re around it, there’s chatter of the male and female. But his call is “Whoo.” Now women speak an octave higher than I’m speaking [raises voice] and so up there, about there, is middle C. [resumes normal tone of voice] That’s why they call it middle C, because that’s where women speak.
So there’s a male horned owl, saying his usual five words. [imitates]. When she answers, she usually gives off eight [imitates]
1—3—3—1. Then he tells her again—and so back and forth, they may talk to each other. It’s in the night.
About where she said—you know the band-tailed pigeons can be thick around here in the valley, and their call is this [imitates]. Of course, that’s in the daytime. Somebody is surely “cuckoo” and maybe they know who.
Now, in the ranges, some of your old voices—a mourning dove sings [imitates]. And if you ever hear a dog barking up in a tree [barks] it’s just a spotted owl talking to a spotted owl. [laughing] They’re not talking to you, they’re talking to owls.
Now, sometimes in the night, you hear this one—it’s a little screech owl. Out here in the West, our screech owl never screeches. It was named for the screech owl in the East that does sometimes give a screech. But ours is soft, and some people think it’s a dove. But notice how it goes downhill [imitates]—usually two slow ones and then it comes running down the hill.
Let’s go an octave higher then [does so] up to here. Now we call that high C. Why? Because in women’s voices that’s the highest C they can reach. They call it high C. That’s not really high, because it belongs still to owls and birds like that.
Speaking of owls, on that key, I know four different owls that sing—like burrowing owls [imitates various bird calls throughout]—but of course that’s down in the drier valley places. But here in the Park, there are two owls you should know, because you may hear them. Surely you’re going to hear the little pygmy owls. They have no little ears that stick up on their head. Funny little fellows, and I like them because they sing in the daytime. And you hear—sometimes they keep saying that single note—and they do it about ten minutes. And then they start singing—two slow ones to start, and then a lot of fast ones. And they finish with two on the end. I call it period and another period.
Sometimes when he’s mad, and he can be mad, he gives it this [imitates]. That’s quite an alarm call to other birds. And if you learn to say that, and you go out and say it several times where you see some of the birds around, they’ll come flying down because, since the pygmy owl catches other birds for his own food, they all gang up on them, and you may see several kinds of birds in one place and you’ll say [gives bird call]. And if a pygmy owl’s in that region, he may come flying towards you too! And sing that mad song back at you.
Now the female pygmy owl is higher because that’s general knowledge, that the females sing and generally, also they sing higher. So, she says [gives call]. When I hear one in the spring and summer, I like to hear the other; you know it’s a pair. They have a nest in a hole in a tree. Quite often they steal the nests of California woodpeckers and use them for their own.
Now the pygmy owl I said sings during the day, and it’s from dawn, early dawn until dusk in the evening. Then there’s another little owl that’s not common in the valley, but—well, you can hear it. Sometimes there’ve been as many as five owls, sovriet owls on the floor of the valley, singing in the night. And you know it’s sovriet because he says this over and over—[gives call]—it’s just about the rhythm of the march of soldiers. Now she would be singing it the same, only higher.
I’ve counted them and sometimes they count up to about 50,000 of those little call notes in one night. They start about eight o’clock at night and finish singing about a quarter of five in the morning. So that’s your pygmy owl and your sovriet owl.
Then we’ve given horned owl, great grey owl, and we’ve given also the screech owl. And know those voices.
Now, we’re getting up to song birds. That is, your high C, you know, and from there on up, you’re in the range of song birds. Not very many of them can sing—can get any of their notes as low as a mockingbird can. A meadow lark puts some of his notes there. [imitates] His lowest note is about high C.
Then the redwing blackbird also gets down that low, just about the end of his song. [demonstrates] And then a few other birds get down as low as our high C, but as I said, most of them are up from the robin which is here [imitates], from robin on up to that highest place where I did chickadee a while ago [whistles]. Most birds, then, songbirds, are singing the last octave on our scale, piano scale.
Now I just spoke of robin. Do you know there are a lot of good bird students that get mixed up with their robin, blackheaded grossbeak, and western tanager songs. So you better be sure to know these differences. The three of them—robin, blackheaded grossbeak, and western tanager—they all have a little phrase in this song, which I call “wheedle.” Because I say “wheedle” and “whistle”—they all have that in their song. But the robin does his up and down. [trills]
Now the blackheaded grossbeak says that [demonstrates], but he signs notes all in between. And sometimes he adds a trill in the song.
Now the tanager, the western tanager, I think is one of the most beautifully colored birds in Yosemite. They come up from Guatemala to nest here in the summer. Remember, four true beautiful colors— red on the head; then a yellow—orange body; black on the back, and a little white bar on the wings. He’s lovely to see. His song says [demonstrates], but he says it about five times and quits. It might be only two times; it could be only three times; it could be four [laughs], but I haven’t heard one say it more than seven times.
So that’s a little difference to note in robin, blackheaded grossbeak, western tanager.
Let’s compare some others which cause people confusion. You know the flicker’s long rolling song, with up to eighty notes [gives sample of call], but pileated woodpecker. This pileated woodpecker sings louder and brighter, and always his first three notes go up like this [demonstrates] and then he’ll never do so many notes in one string as you hear the flicker doing. So three notes go up. It is bright! And the pileated woodpecker is called the cock of the woods. It will be a red letter day for any of you who ever come across the nest of the pileated woodpecker. They have that flaming red crest on the top of the head. It’s the largest woodpecker you’re going to see on the continent, because the ivory bill woodpecker is practically extinct, and maybe a few of them are left down in Florida.
So get acquainted with that bird and follow up this [bird song]. Or when you hear them say [calls] his call note, see if you can find the nest sometime, and report it to the museum if you do, because it’s a rare occasion.
Then there are two kinglets up here: the golden crowned kinglet, the ruby crowned kinglet. Both of them have stayed in the mountains, even in the winter. Lots of them will go down into the valleys and to the coast, but they all come back to nest high, high, high on our trees, high, high up in the hills. And their voices are high, way up at the top.
Now the ruby crowned kinglet’s song drops down to a rondelet like one of those Swiss music boxes you’ve heard [trills], and you know you’re hearing ruby crowned kinglet. All winter, all they’ve been saying is just a short little [popping sound], but into the summer, they get into that great song.
Now the golden crowned kinglet goes up and up, and so it is really high [demonstrates]; comes trailing down at the end a little. So that’s the golden crowned kinglet.
The California quail and the mountain quail sing so differently it will surprise you. You know the call [gives] of the California quail, but listen to this. Most often, you won’t be seeing the singer of that, but when you hear these changes of pitch, and sometimes you hear sort of a mad call [gives example]— that’s like when a hawk is around, you may well know it’s the mountain quail in song.
During the incubating season, they lay their nest on the ground of course. Both of these species change their tunes. The male California quail must stay on watch in his territory and periodically sing an all’s well. He likes to be up on top of something—a rock or something, just a bit above the ground, and he says—. He’ll be saying it about fifteen minutes. Of course, during the daytime.
Now the male mountain quail says his all’s well on a much lower pitch and much more explosive. [demonstrates] Of course, he spaces them also about fifteen seconds apart. No, they’re not singing that song I gave you first. The valley quail has practically quit saying [gives call]; the mountain quail has almost quit saying [demonstrates]; and they just stick to their [bird calls], which are like, comparison of the two vireo songs you most often hear—the warbling vireo and the solitary vireo. The male vireo even sings while he’s sitting on the eggs! [laughs]
Or did you know that only two of our songbirds take their regular turns at incubating—that’s the warbling vireo and the blackheaded grossbeak. We did grossbeak quite a while ago, remember? [bird call] So once you—then the vireo song—I’ll give it to you in a minute; it goes something like this. [demonstrates] When you get to learn these songs and know these birds, and then you know that they may be sitting on their nest, because they’re the only two that do it, it will be fun finding their nest, just by following their voice.
Then if you hear it singing quite a long time in one spot, suspect that they have a nest, suspect that they have a nest and he’s sitting on the eggs, go see if you can find it. You must remember that the grossbeak nest is a shallow one made of sticks and rootlets and so flimsy you can see right through it. Usually it is on some low branch.
But the vireo nest is high up in a tree and always on a branch that will swing a bit in the wind. Now we get back to that song of the vireo. Like most vireos, he’s an incessant singer. And he just keeps it up! Even during the hottest part of the day. It’s something like [demonstrates]. While he sits on the eggs, there seems to be more of a rising inflection on each phrase, like he’s calling to her, “When are you coming back? When are you coming back?”
The solitary vireo is called the Jimmy-come-here bird because he keeps on singing [bird song] “Jimmy, come here. Make it snappy. Hurry up. Pretty quick.” And so on and on and on. That’s the solitary vireo.
There’s another help in remembering the songs of birds that I’d like to mention. That is, the number sense most of them have. How in the world they know how to count is more than we can find out. But they seem to, because in every song there seems to be a length that you can depend on. And the number of notes that they stick to. So birds stay in their places in singing. You know them because every time you hear [whistles] an up and down, you know that’s Robin, and so for the others—they are distinctive.
Let’s take some simple examples. Red breasted nuthatch— says but a single word, which he may repeat many times, over and over, You can do it, too. Just close your nose by pinching the two fingers and then say, “Ank, ank, ank,” and so forth. Listen to one of them sometime and you’ll find the right pitch of your voice. I do it [demonstrates]. So that’s red breasted nuthatch, as they go yanking up and down the trunks of trees, or the limbs in the trees, searching for insects.
Now the kingfisher—the belted kingfisher—goes rattling along up and down our streams. I say “rattle” because that’s the way it sounds. And you can do this; try it. Open your mouth and rattle your tongue by blowing hard on it, and you get a kingfisher. [imitates sound] Oh, there ought to be a little bit more music in it [tries again]. That’s a little bit better. But that’s the rattling call of the kingfisher which seems to satisfy that species for song.
The cedar waxwings. The whole song of the cedar waxwing is just one note—and high, really high. When they’re down here, just in the wintertime, because they nest far up in the north—you know, they’re eating berries on the tops of trees, or shrubs. They give off one note. [high pitched note] Sometimes you know a whole flock of them are up there, and some of them vary a little bit in pitch. It makes a good bit of music. [demonstrates] That’s all they ever sing way up north where they are nesting. So that’s a one-note song.
The brown creeper counts to seven for his song. [gives example] Two up, four down, and one up. Maybe you can’t whistle that high. You might try just lisping. It may sound like this [lisping sounds]. At least you’ll get the feeling of it and you’ll count it up to seven, know you’re hearing brown creeper.
The canyon wren is one of our sweetest singers [imitates wren song]. I don’t know why they put in that interlude, but they do. Sometimes, in their number sense, they reach as many as eighteen notes as they come down that sliding thing. It sort of represents the pattern of what the bird is doing. They’re singing as they flit from rock to rock in the slopes under some cliff, or they may be high up on the cliff itself, flying all around, and alighting on the face of the cliff. So something like a rock falling down over a cliff and bouncing.
And like a rock bouncing, it starts fast and then gets slower and slower, toward the end. Only in this case, they make the rock roll right back up the hill again in many of their songs—something like this [demonstrates]. So know the dotted canyon wren sometimes.