Nature News from RSPB Scotland

How to Listen to Birds Episode 3

• RSPB Scotland

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In Episode 3 of our miniseries How to Listen to Birds Stephen is visiting RSPB Scotland’s Abernethy nature reserve. Assistant Warden Ewan Craig is his guide as they take a walk through the stunning pine forest. There’s noisy Goldcrests making a sound that belies their tiny size. Ewan has an odd way to remember the song of the Chaffinch. And the pair luck out with a pine forest specialist, Crested Tit.

We want to know what you want to hear about in the podcast. Drop us an email podcast.scotland@RSPB.org.uk

There's more about Bird ID including help with birdsong here https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/a-z

Visit Loch Garten
https://www.rspb.org.uk/days-out/reserves/loch-garten-abernethy

Stephen Magee:

Hello, I'm Stephen Magee and welcome to episode 3 of how to Listen to Birds. It's incredible the range there is and you're always learning every single year and it's great fun.

Ewan Craig:

Some people describe it as a laughing bandit, so it was ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. I shoot you.

Stephen Magee:

Definitely an advantage to rise above the rest. You don't want to be a one trick pony.

Ewan Craig:

It's got a bigger back catalogue than Taylor Swift. This is how to listen to birds.

Stephen Magee:

Now, don't worry, I haven't left the taps on the water rushing by you can hear in the background is the water of Leith. I've popped down here for a little wander kind of mid-morning. We're now getting towards the middle of May and I've been treated to I mean, it's not, you know, rare or unusual things necessarily, but just like a lovely mix of sounds because, like the rivers, like smooshing away in the background and just above me there's been a robin, which is just always a treat to hear, that golden, mellow, liquid kind of tone, but in the distance. I don't know if I'm just imagining it, but it felt like it was responding to the robin is a blackbird as well and like for somebody.

Stephen Magee:

For those of you who haven't listened to the other episodes of the podcast, it's probably worth going back and having a listen to episode one. But if you want to start here,. I am feeling my way with Birdsong and the premise of this podcast is like, hopefully I can help other people do the same thing and, like, robin and Blackbird are actually two ones that you hear a lot, even in town, but you can maybe be a little bit easily confused because of both these are very melodic sounds, but the robin, for me, is so much more liquid than, as I say, golden. And the blackbird has, like particularly this one, had a kind of a slightly mournful kind of tone to it to me. But it may just be that it's the middle of the morning, it's done its dawn chorus earlier on and it's lost its mojo for a bit, I don't know.

Stephen Magee:

Anyway, episode three sees me have a very nice time visiting our Abernethy Nature Reserve in the Cairngorms, and specifically meeting up with Ewan Craig, who's an assistant warden up there at our Loch Garten Nature Centre, and having a bit of a wander and a listen to what you can hear in that amazing place. If you haven't been, please do try and visit. So I'll be back at the end for a little bit of housekeeping and some more chat, but meanwhile here's what I got up to at Loch Garten. We are walking through the woods at Abernethy Nature Reserve, part of Scotland's ancient Caledonian Forest. It's amazing. I am with Assistant Warden Ewan Craig Say hello Ewan, hello Stephen, just to give people a sense of where we are and what it's like. It's a really, really big forest.

Ewan Craig:

Is that fair? That is fair to say, yes. Abernethy is the largest remnant of the Caledonian pine woods.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and it is that kind of if you've never been to it, for a start, get that sorted out, but if you haven't been to it, it is part of it is not just the trees which are beautiful and these gorgeous old Scotch pines which are kind of like gnarly and twisty and kind of like textured and amazing looking, but it's also like the understory here as well has got like juniper and all these kind of other amazing things in it, so it really feels like, and also the trees have got stuff growing on them, so it feels like life heaped on life, heaped on life yeah, that's the diversity that makes ancient woodlands so special, so important and so magical, really, in my, my opinion right?

Stephen Magee:

well, we are going to go and see what we can hear in these magical places. I am not going to tempt fate. There is one thing I'm hoping to hear and if we hear it I will tell you. If we don't hear it, I'll maybe say disappointed at the end of what it is. But let's see what we can there.

Ewan Craig:

What's that?

Stephen Magee:

That's a siskin very chattery song.

Ewan Craig:

What's going on in it? Isn't it very busy.

Stephen Magee:

It was very busy. So a siskin for people who don't know is like it's a finch.

Ewan Craig:

Yeah, it's a little finch.

Stephen Magee:

It's a little finch. It's like people quite often confuse it with gree finch right. Yeah, but it's a little bit more delicate, and it's quite.

Ewan Craig:

people quite often confuse it with Greenfinch right, yeah, but it's a little bit more delicate and it's quite a bit smaller than Greenfinch, but similar greenish, yellowish colors. The male is much more striking, quite yellow with a black cap. The female is duller brownish, green streaky, and it's the male that sings, and Some people might find the song reminiscent of a goldfinch.

Stephen Magee:

They're not too distantly related yeah, it used to be in the same genus.

Ewan Craig:

Now they're separate.

Stephen Magee:

It's got that same metallic poppy, kind of like really busy, feel of a goldfinch, yeah, but also like so it's another interesting example, isn't it? Like? A song is not wholly consistent, so it had little phrases in it, had like like busy, busy, busy, and then there'd be a pause and then a couple of times it went (imitates sound) and that's a bit more kind of green finchy, isn't it? I suppose like, isn't that that kind of like almost like metal or metal kind of sound?

Ewan Craig:

yeah, and that's that's distinctive of the siskin and that it's almost like a stuck pig that squeal. So when I was learning the song of Siskin, I would hear that chattering up and down.

Stephen Magee:

It's probably a siskin, but I wasn't quite sure until I heard that squealing Like a very small stuck pig at the top of a tree, exactly, you know, just like you would hear yeah, yeah, but, yeah, but, and like Again and this is something we might talk about as we go around that is a bird that was right up in the top of, like a big tree in front of us.

Ewan Craig:

Yeah, these trees are probably over 20 meters tall, 25 meters maybe. So without if we hadn't heard it, we wouldn't have known it was there. There's no way we would have seen that. No, unless it flew past, in which case we would have seen a little black speck flying past. Yeah, nice.

Stephen Magee:

Right onwards and upwards. Yeah, we just had a flyby from a chaffinch.

Ewan Craig:

First describe the song for people. The song of the chaffinch is cascades down and ends in a little sneeze at the end, like achoo. Also, some people would describe it as a laughing bandit. So it was ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, I'll shoot you.

Stephen Magee:

I would like to know who's in charge of all these things.

Ewan Craig:

Because obviously what that sounds like to me is's in charge of all these things.

Stephen Magee:

Because obviously what that sounds like to me is ha ha, ha, ha ha, I'll shoot you. I can see what they mean because it has got that little bounce at the end.

Ewan Craig:

Yeah, that little flourish, the Chaffinch, is one of the most common well, one of the two most common songbirds that we find here in the forest on the reserve Up there with Coal Tit. They're everywhere. Really. They're just a soundtrack to Abernethy.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, and actually in the same little bit behind it there was a Coal Tit as well, and the coal tit is, like some people might be familiar with, a great tit because it goes teacher, teacher, teacher. The coal tit is kind of the same, but how is it different?

Ewan Craig:

Yeah, it's very similar. When I first came to Abernethy I thought I was hearing lots of great tits and I thought they sounded different somehow, and then I realised they were actually coal tits, so it's a smaller bird. So to me the sound is a smaller sound and it's a much sweeter sounding song. Your listeners may or may not understand what I mean by that, but that's the feeling I get listening to it.

Stephen Magee:

I think it's less insistent and a bit more melodic right, yeah, yeah, quite right. Yeah, so it's got that like whereas the teacher's like the great tit's, like I am a for a tit, I am quite a large bird and I'm making a big noise, yeah, exactly and if you look at the sonograms of bird recordings and that can show you the shape of the songs, that can be quite a useful tip for learning them.

Ewan Craig:

And the great tit, the two notes are very distinctive. Each one is a separate note in the same whereas the coal tit actually if you look at the sonogram you can see that the two notes slide into each other slightly and once you, once I see that on the sonogram, I can actually start hearing that when I listen to the bird it's just sort of the two notes slide together quite as you see, melodically, yeah yeah, and so you were saying to me when we're walking down that so you come and do surveys in the woods, like to see what birds are here, because obviously it's really important when you're managing a reserve right to know what's on it, what isn't on it, how that's changing.

Stephen Magee:

It's the guts of the science of any reserve. It's like breeding bird surveys, right, um, how, if when you come, like in the morning at this time of year, how many of the things that you're counting are chaffinches and coal tits?

Ewan Craig:

a good proportion more than half, I would say of those two species, and the songs is really key to those surveys. We could stand here in this wood for half an hour and not see anything like we were talking about that siskin we saw earlier. When it's right at the top of the trees there, tiny little bird hidden in the branches, almost impossible to see and even harder to actually identify, whereas the songs that's the whole point of a song. It carries far, it tells everybody or anything that's listening, who is singing. If I know the bird songs and bird calls, then I can spend five minutes out in the woods, sun shining on a lovely spring morning, listening to birds sounds terrible, doesn't it? Stephen?

Stephen Magee:

Sounds like such an imposition.

Ewan Craig:

And it tells me, what is present on the reserve, what we've got here now, and if we do that in the future, we'll be able to tell how things are changing with with the management, with the restoration work that we are doing here at Abernethy you know, one of the things I think is really interesting about it as well is that, in order so, the birds sing, at least in part, like territorially right.

Stephen Magee:

So it's so like. I mean like. So I guess most of the birds that are singing here at this time of year are either singing to defend or declare a territory, or attract a mate , or both at the same time exactly that's right, okay. So the bird is saying this is my patch here I am to other birds. But if we want to understand the bird world right ie how many there are, what they're doing, how many territories there are then we need to think like a bird, right?

Ewan Craig:

you know, and a bird wouldn't work out how many.

Stephen Magee:

That's why they sing right, because they're, because they're not going to be able to see how many birds, and so we're being like birds, which actually is kind of cool it is very much cool to tune into that, that level of um non-human communication, and to have that awareness of the other life forms that we share this world with even if it is five o'clock in the morning when you haven't do it it's.

Ewan Craig:

It's worth it for the, for the experience. I'll be honest, even it can be a struggle getting out of bed, but once I'm out there, it's just. It's an amazing thing to get to go and do.

Stephen Magee:

So in amongst all these chaffinches and coal tits, there was very briefly there, like a really intense kind of metallic rattle kind of a thing.

Ewan Craig:

Yeah, so what was that? That was a goldcrest, which is jointly our smallest native bird. It weighs about the same as a five pence piece, so it's a very high pitched call and some people are not able to actually hear the goldcrest because it's too high pitched. It goes beyond the range of hearing For the rest of us. It's just at the very edge, the very top foot range, and that was. It looked to me like two birds having a fight, having a territorial scrap between neighbours. That's why it was quite so intense, because, you know, they were fighting, they were shouting at each other.

Stephen Magee:

And again, that is, like you say, the UK's smallest bird right and quite not at the top, to be fair that time, but quite high up some mature trees. No way, we didn't know that was there unless it was making that noise.

Ewan Craig:

No, absolutely not. There's a real value in opening our ears to the soundscapes of the woods. You know, even beyond the value that we get for our survey work, just the value that I get personally going for a walk, I don't need to use my eyes, I can't really use my eyes to understand what's here. It's my ears that tell me what's around me in the woods, that's letting me build up that picture of what I'm sharing these woods with.

Stephen Magee:

Now the sun has just come out from behind the clouds. It's kind of one of those days the sun's coming in and out and these trees in front of us are all backlit. They look amazing, but the sound level seemed to me to slightly go up when that when that happened is. Is that just my perception, or is that true?

Ewan Craig:

The weather does very much affect the activity of birdsong and bird calls. You know, just just like you and me, when the sun comes out, we feel the warmth and we feel good and we feel more active and energetic. So do the birds, and they've got that. We feel more active and energetic. So do the birds. They've got that energy to be sitting on a branch belting out their song or feeding or chasing each other around or whatever it is they're doing. And when the sun goes away, if the weather was to turn and the rain showers were to come in, they're much more likely to hunker down. And if the weather's bad, they're just going to sit tight and conserve energy. They don't want to waste energy at that point. And that's that's another factor in what a song is. It's a deliberate waste of energy. In a way. The bird's not spending time feeding, it's not spending time staying warm, it's out on a branch, it's being loud, it's being active, often early in the morning so it's a it's a deliberate waste of energy.

Ewan Craig:

it's like, in a way, you could put it that way. The bird is demonstrating it's a really fit individual that has energy to spare. That shows that it will be able to provide for a family for young chicks, because it can waste energy by singing.

Stephen Magee:

I think it's like a disco, isn't it?

Ewan Craig:

It's very much like that.

Stephen Magee:

It's like an audio. It's like I can throw shapes. I can. Yeah, it's a similar kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had said at the beginning of our chat that there was one thing I was hoping to get, but I wasn't going to jinx it and I'll have to check the recordings when we get back right, but I think we have got it. So this is Stephen popping up again, post-recording. I did definitely get it, but there's a chaffinch trying to get in the way. So the noise you're listening for is the really fast brr-brr kind of a noise, metallic kind of chink, chink, chink noise. Is the chaffinch? The brrrr brrrr noise is the bird that we're listening for, a very intense kind of like a very fast bubbling kind of slightly lazery sound, which is a crested tit, which is a massive speciality for here, right yeah, it's one of the highlights of the of the pine woods, if you're if you're a birder, because they're only found in these sorts of conifer forests.

Ewan Craig:

So in the UK you only find them in the Scottish Highlands. Places like Abernethy is probably one of the best places for visitors to come and see them or hear them.

Stephen Magee:

In fact they are. They are so identified with here that I can testify that if you walk around here with an rspb branded jacket on, everybody will come up to you and say have you seen any crested tits? But have a look at one online. Right, they are a stunning looking bird with a big old crest like a crazy kind of like kind of like fairy icing fairy cake, kind of like crest thing on their head and busy, active, kind of like you know nice things to see and that sound is very intense yeah, yeah, they're quite, quite chattery sometimes quite, um quite insistent, persistent, persistent.

Ewan Craig:

Perhaps it's quite distinctive as well, so it's a really nice one to identify by sound, because it is relatively easy. It makes the same sound every time. Once you tune in to the particular characteristics, it doesn't really sound like anything else. It's very much. So you're talking about visitors wanting to know where they are. You can seem really impressive by pointing them out by sound.

Ewan Craig:

People think you're some sort of guru of birdsong, even if that's the only birdsong you actually know. It's a way to characterise the place because they're specialists of this particular environment. It's those specialists that you really make a place really important, and being able to spot those is it rounds out the experience of being in a place like this.

Stephen Magee:

And it rounds out our day. Thank you very much.

Ewan Craig:

Thank you, stephen, it's been a pleasure.

Stephen Magee:

So Ewan Craig asserted there that he's not a guru of birdsong. I would disagree. Certainly I would not have heard and identified half the things that were cutting about up there without Ewan's help. So thanks to him for that. And, as previously discussed, abernethy is an amazing place to visit if you get the chance. That Loch Garten Nature Centre is full of things to do and interpretation and walks and all kinds of great stuff. I'll put the link to the information about the Nature Centre into the show notes.

Stephen Magee:

So we are three episodes in. I think there's going to be six or seven in total. We're meant to get them out once a week, so do keep an eye on the feed. One thing that I'd said I'd do last time is just do a little recap at the end of the podcast of some of the species we'd heard for those of you who are trying to groove some of these species in. So on our garden trip we had a very noisy siskin which included that weirdly kind of long drawn out metallic sound we make. We had the chaffinch, gold crest which was kind of like high and angry sounding, and the thing that I really wanted to get was the crested tit, which was slightly obscured by chaffinch, but definitely audible if you try hard. So next week's episode we're going to be delving a bit deeper, not just into which birds are singing, but into why they're singing and actually some of the different sounds that birds make that aren't song. So keep an eye out in the feeds for that.

Stephen Magee:

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review. It helps people find us in the podcast jungle. If there are questions you have or things you want the podcast to cover, please get in touch. Podcast. scotland@rspb. org. uk That email address is in the show notes and that is all for this week. I will speak to you soon. Goodbye.