Nature News from RSPB Scotland

How to Listen to Birds Episode 4

• RSPB Scotland

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In the latest episode of our mini series How to Listen to Birds Stephen is visiting RSPB Scotland’s Baron’s Haugh reserve.

Senior Conservation Officer Toby Wilson is his guide as he encounters the bewildering array of noises a Great Tit can make.

There’s also a chance to focus on one of the sweetest songs in the wood, the Robin. Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs are singing loudly.

Toby also offers his expert take on why birds sing and the risks involved.

Let us know how you're enjoying birdsong podcast.scotland@RSPB.org.uk

Bird ID including song https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/a-z

Stephen Magee:

Hello, I'm Stephen Magee and this is episode 4 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. Some people describe it as a laughing bandit. So it goes was ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, I shoot you. It's definitely in their advantage to rise above the rest. You don't want to be a one trick pony.

Toby Wilson:

It's got a bigger back catalogue than Taylor Swift.

Stephen Magee:

This is how to listen to birds. Hello and welcome to episode four. I'm in a little wood just outside of Edinburgh, just the other side of the bypass, short walk from the bus. I've come here because it is a nice place to hear birds and in this episode we're going to try and delve a little bit deeper into not just what sounds birds are making and how that helps us identify them, but also try and get a bit more into why they're making sounds and the different kinds of sounds that they're making. But just before that, I wanted to share a small moral victory.

Stephen Magee:

Now, for those of you who've started with episode four, you might want to go back to episode one, but if not, the premise of this podcast is I'm kind of learning about birdsong as I go along and I mean it's been a really positive experience for me, you know, finding out a bit more about bird song. And as I came up here there was a bird singing and I heard it and I was like I think Blackcap . This is what I heard, and indeed it Blackcap . And before I started doing this podcast, like three, four weeks ago, before I'd gone to leave in and had, like Vicky and Darren, explain to me what a black cat sounds like and help me idea I would not have known what that was. I would have known it was a bird singing and it would be nice to hear. But my whole experience in the morning was enriched by that and I think you know that's. That's hopefully what you get out of paying a bit of attention and learning a bit as you go along. It's not just IDing the bird, which is good, to ID the bird and say you, you know, I mean, I've just seen two Jays fly past. That was nice, but I've also heard a Blackcap that I never saw. So there we go. But also I think it brings something else to like this wee walk this morning.

Stephen Magee:

Anyway, enough of me patting myself on the back. So, as I say, this one's a bit more about not just which bird is singing but why it's singing and making some other kinds of noises that aren't song. To help me with that, I had Toby Wilson and we went to Baron's Haugh, which is a brilliant RSPB reserve just outside of Motherwell, and this is what we heard. Hello, I'm at Baron's Haugh, which is an RSPB Scotland nature reserve just on the outskirts of Motherwell. It's a fantastic place. It's like woodland, there's wetland here, but it's super accessible, like I got the train here and like it's 10 minutes walk from the train station and you're in a reserve. It's fantastic, and Toby's with me. Who's like senior conservation officer, right, I've got your.

Toby Wilson:

That's right senior conservation officer.

Stephen Magee:

But you're here mostly right.

Toby Wilson:

Because conservation officer. But you're here mostly, right, Because you're going to explain birdsong to me, right? I hope so. It's nice to see you, Stephen. Nice to be with you.

Stephen Magee:

What I think we should do. Let's take a wander into the kind of the woody bits. Let's see what we can hear.

Toby Wilson:

I look forward to it. That'd be great.

Stephen Magee:

So up in that tree there's a little bird making a very big noise. First of all, what is that?

Toby Wilson:

So this is a Robin and one of the ways I always like to remember, I think, bird sound and birdsong when you're starting to learn it, like anything, mnemonics are really good. So you like to try and find a way of why is that a robin? And I always think it's such a kind of plaintive, quite a forlorn trilling. And I always think of that song, kind of who killed cop robin, you know. So he's almost singing a lament almost. I find it quite a plaintive call. So yeah, so that's a Robin. Again, that's its kind of song.

Stephen Magee:

I, to me it is liquid. That's the. It's got this running, flowing, these just little beautiful. It's still doing it and one of the amazing things about Robin's where I live in the city, it's a bird I hear all the time, in the night as well, and everything.

Toby Wilson:

It's just this constant, beautiful presence it is, and sometimes people think they hear them singing at night and they think it's a nightingale it's a bit sad I know, I know, but uh, yeah, absolutely, and they'll, and I mean like a lot of birds, um kind of urban lighting effects when they sing as well, you know, which is possibly, you know, a negative thing. There's different studies, but yeah, it's probably not entirely good for them when they have this artificial kind of all 24-hour lighting, so it does sometimes kind of affect how they sing. It's possibly that. But even in kind of more rural areas, robins particularly, will kind of have this kind of evening song and it's a wonderful kind of yeah, as I say, I think it's rather kind of mournful in some respects.

Stephen Magee:

No, there is. There's a mournful kind of sad edge to it but also like a liquidy kind of golden beauty to it.

Toby Wilson:

Yeah, like melancholic romantic kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Magee:

So I mean, that's how we react to it, right, but how do? Why are robins doing that In the most fundamental level? Right, that is a song, right? It's an archetypal bird song, a robin song, right? Why is that robin at the top of that tree making itself incredibly visible and audible to any predators that might be around here? Right, why is it doing that?

Toby Wilson:

So there's a really good point about predators, because it's a trade-off. It takes a lot of energy to sing as well. You know, a small bird making that song takes a lot of energy and they're putting themselves in a place, as you say, a sparrowhawk could easily see it and kind of potentially come Really. So we are in April now, kind of height of the breeding season. So it's all about kind of breeding and the bird is in a way two, two things really all related to kind of the breeding uh, looking to potentially get a mate.

Toby Wilson:

We're later on in april so it might already be mating, it might have already mated and might have a territory but potentially so it could attract a mate to come in um, and then once they've mated and they've started, it's kind of established the territory and potentially even got a nest. Then it's basically they've started, it's kind of established the territory and potentially even got a nest. Then it's basically setting up that territory. It's kind of making claim to its territory and saying get out, you know, leave other, telling other robins to stay away. You know its resources, you know in that territory. That's what it's doing. So it's kind of putting it at stake.

Stephen Magee:

And is that song and the answer to this question may be I don't know, because I'm not a Robin right, but is the song it uses to attract a mate the same as the song it uses to deter a rival, if you see what I mean? Or do we know? Or are there different? Is there one song that says hey, ladies, I'm pretty fancy and another song that says this is my house you better, you know you better?

Toby Wilson:

roll. It seems pretty similar.

Stephen Magee:

Right, okay.

Toby Wilson:

So for something like Robins they will. The song I think, is yes, you know, basically the same. You know they're basically saying and also it's partly about physical prowess as well, you know if I can sing loud and I can kind of stake it. So I think there's not much difference between the song For Robins now there are.

Toby Wilson:

So something that and it's not exactly a song, but a bird that very much says that has a different call, that says you know, get off my territory very aggressive is a mistlethrush. So a mistlethrush has a song that would say you know to, yeah, hello ladies, come on, you know, come and see what a big guy I am. But it's got a very aggressive rattling noise. You've possibly heard it because it does it. A lot is that's a kind of staking a claim. So it's got this really rattling noise and that's a very aggressive contact call to other missile thrushes but also all other birds saying get out, this is my patch, and they all use that in the winter as well. So it does differ a bit but by and large the song does both. You know, it's both attracting and attracting females and also saying can we get off?

Stephen Magee:

as well. Well, I'm wholly convinced by this guy. I think he's pretty fast he's doing. He's wonderful, isn't he?

Toby Wilson:

uh, and also you asked about you know why up?

Stephen Magee:

because obviously again you say yeah, because we should tell people he's right in the top right. How are you with you with trees? What is that? It's a tree, right.

Toby Wilson:

For our purposes, it's a tree.

Stephen Magee:

It's got no leaves in it currently and he's right up near the top Like super visible. But that high position is important, right it?

Toby Wilson:

is and different birds. Some birds will sing from cover. So a lot of the some of the warblers will see well like rains.

Toby Wilson:

Yeah, you know they'll kind of hide, hide away. So it does different between species. But the the theory really is, it's pretty, it's enabling them to project, you know it's basically I can get, and they're called song posts. So certain birds will really part of their habitat, will require these kind of places that they can sing from and actually kind of send that volume out and high up and it's really kind of projecting it as well. So it poses probably there's a visual clue as well, you know. So it's partly being seen and you know again in terms of the territory and attracting a mate. But again it allows the song to kind of travel further.

Stephen Magee:

So that rusty hinge was that.

Toby Wilson:

a Great Tit. And another way people use to remember it is they say teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher. I think it doesn't really matter Whatever works for you.

Stephen Magee:

Yeah, I always think it's kind of why is it teacher, not any other?

Toby Wilson:

just like any word with two syllables.

Stephen Magee:

I think it's like hiya, hiya, hiya.

Toby Wilson:

It's like a toddler. You know what I mean.

Stephen Magee:

Hiya, so right is that a?

Toby Wilson:

call or a song. That's a good point. So it's a song. It's quite a simple song. You know again different birds. You have songbirds that really kind of they like our blackbirds, the robin and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you might say a great tit was a songbird, but really it's just got two tones. So it's a fairly simple song. So the difference between something like a song, as we talked about earlier, that's saying it's either attracting a mate or establishing a territory. Now you've got two other noises that birds might make. Well, they make a whole series of noises and if you pick one up they're, you pick one up. The main. Two others are something called a contact call and that will often be just a single note where they will just kind of let other birds, particularly other birds of the same species, maybe a family group, let them know they're about. And a great bird for making that would be long-tailed tits.

Stephen Magee:

Oh yeah, when a flock of them go through and they're just like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep and that is lovely because they move in family groups and are very much established around the families.

Toby Wilson:

And that contact call is just to say here, I am, here, I am, here, I am, here, I am. So it's very, very often just a single note. So that's a contact call and sometimes that will be a prelude to an alarm call, which is when they see a predator or humans walking along, and that will be often a bit of a harsher kind of rattling sometimes.

Stephen Magee:

Like a blackbird's got a really distinctive alarm call. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that as they fly away Absolutely.

Toby Wilson:

And what's interesting between the you're right about the blackbird and the mistle thrush we talked about earlier got quite distinct alarm calls. But some of the other contact and alarm calls aren't as different between species and sometimes they're, you know, they're quite similar. It's quite difficult to tell that between a great tit and a blue tit and really they serve very because they serve such different purposes. So a great in making the two-tone, the teacher, or, as we say, rusting hinge, is saying I am a great tit and it's talking to other great tits. That's it speaking to other great tits, A contact or an alarm call particularly. All it's saying is watch out to anything.

Toby Wilson:

So it's kind of saying it's whether great tits, or it's saying to the predator that I know you're here, right, okay, it doesn't really matter whether what species it is, it's just saying.

Toby Wilson:

I've got you, you know, I've spotted you, or to its mate or something. Watch out, there's a predator about, so it doesn't really matter. So the difference isn't as important for a contact or an alarm call as it is for a song where it's saying here I am, I'm a great tit, other great tits either get out of my territory or the females come to my territory and go to mate.

Stephen Magee:

But this is also one of the situations where it's good to be able to speak bird right, yes, so if, for example, if we were out in this wood and like everything started alarm calling like we'd be, like it might be a sparrowhawk.

Toby Wilson:

Right, you know we'd be like you know.

Stephen Magee:

You can, if you know what these things mean it actually can help you, you know, actually understand what's going on in the world around you.

Toby Wilson:

I think that's it Reading the landscape, and I think also it helps you tune in. You know, as with anything where you start to recognize these chords, that you separate them just from this kind of background noise and it just makes you more kind of aware of what's going on. So yeah, absolutely. Right, I can only characterize that as malfunctioning child's toy.

Stephen Magee:

What is that?

Toby Wilson:

Is that a great tit? It's a great tit alarm call, and I think it's really us, unfortunately, so we should move on. Okay, yeah, it's fine, it's fine, but yeah, but they've got. It's slightly different. They've actually got two there.

Toby Wilson:

one was making another, another type of alarm cause the other one sounded more like a almost like a blue tit, yeah, but they were both and this is, you know, we were talking about earlier the how they're slightly difficult to distinguish and it because it doesn't really matter. But yeah, and actually great to have quite a lot of different alarm calls and it it's difficult to identify it because, yeah, you kind of make that weird, as I say almost electronic call, but there's a range, quite a range of ones.

Stephen Magee:

I should say we've walked away in the lifetime alone. So we didn't get on with whatever they were doing.

Toby Wilson:

So this time of year it's probably seen us and it might have a nest nearby. So it's just kind of quietly. It wasn't showing much agitation. The bird itself wasn't. Sometimes they flap their wings and they can actually look agitated. That was kind of quite a gentle alarm call, so it was just almost I'm keeping an eye on, let you, I'm letting you know, I know you're here and it's also. It possibly had its mate with it and it was just kind of speaking to that and just saying you know, watch out, there's humans about in this case. So they've got nothing to fear from us.

Stephen Magee:

Nothing to fear from us exactly so we were listening to something there like a, like a, like a falling kind of cadence, like, but quite a whistly kind of falling cadence, first of all what is it? And it's warblers, right? I find the whole idea of warblers quite confusing, right? Because they do tend to be like small greenish brown birds. You know quite hard to tell apart how important is song with warblers.

Toby Wilson:

Oh, in terms of identification, absolutely Well, identification, absolutely warbling, I mean, I suppose, as the name says, you know we're all warbling because that's where it comes from. Um, oh, we've got a little wren there as well.

Toby Wilson:

So um, yes, to tell apart warblers with the willow warbler. So in terms of identification, there's a classic the willow warbler and the chiff chaff yeah, two really difficult birds to identify in the field. I mean, they're very, very similar kind of physically, but incredibly different song. So a Willow Warbler's got this wonderful kind of descending, as you say, kind of gently, like a babbling brook, descending down a hill or something, whereas a Chiff Chaff it's name is kind of it's good.

Stephen Magee:

It's much more chaotic. Hopefully we'll get one in a bit because they're somewhere around, but they're quite chaotic.

Toby Wilson:

It says its name Chiff Chaff, chiff Chaff. So actually as a, you know if you're birding, if you're out birding. Very difficult to tell apart visually but very easy to tell apart in terms of their song. So yeah, and other warblers we can kind of talk about different warblers, but yeah, those two are. The song makes it really.

Stephen Magee:

And I think as well, it's not necessarily think about it as an experience when you're out. It's not just about the ID. For me, hearing those sounds and knowing what? Because these are migrants right, largely right, although with climate change things are changing and like chif chafs are hanging around the winter and stuff. But these are, these are migrants and, like millions of these birds travel to the uk right every year. And when you hear those sounds and you know what they are, to me it enriches the experience of just being out because you're realising there's this whole global process going on around you with these tiny little birds.

Toby Wilson:

Isn't it? And and what I find also magical is that, yeah, you know these birds weigh, you know tens of grams, you know tiny, and they make this amazing distance and they herald, firstly, they herald the arrival of spring. You know what? Isn't it wonderful? You kind of feel the earth is coming back to life when these birds are. So, you know, it's quite evocative for many people. And the other thing I think, kind of following on from what you're saying, is it also says about where the place is. You know, you get a willow warbler there because we're in a kind of scrubby habitat with a few trees, whereas if you get, um, something that is like a lapwing, you know you're in the kind of wet grass area as well, so it tells you about the place as well.

Toby Wilson:

So I think it kind of thing. And then I think you know, following on from that, what I find is amazing is some of these birds will come back after all that migration not all of them, but they'll come back to the same place. You know, they'll fly for thousands of miles and arrive back to the same place that they were last year. So you know, they kind of are almost zoning in. What a privilege to have them on your doorstep. That they come back to that I think it's amazing.

Stephen Magee:

See, I really enjoyed spending a bit of time there with Toby and getting a bit more a sense of the different range of noises that birds make, why they're making them. I mean, that great tit noise was crazy the noise it was making and I think it is true that having a bit more of an idea of why birds are making different noises at different times for different purposes it does basically enrich your experience of listening, I think, and also maybe as an opportunity to try and put yourself in their shoes a little bit. Other birds do wear shoes, but you know what I mean. Anyway, as ever, I am going to offer a little bit of a recap on some of the birds that we heard in that episode. We heard a robin, which maybe we went on a bit too much about how it sounds, a bit mournful and sad, but it just kind of does, for all I know that robin was definitely happy. We also then heard the, the normal song of the great tit whether you think it's teach a teacher or hiya, hiya or something else, with two syllables in it. Make your own choice. And then we heard that odd electronic toys gone wrong noise, which was the alarm call of the great tit.

Stephen Magee:

And finally, to recap, two of the birds that came up at the end, they're actually singing here where I'm standing. So that's Willow Warbler, which is the descending call quite liquid one. And then there's Chiff Chaff, which is the bouncing chiff chaff, chiff chaff, chiff, chaff, chiff chaff. And, believe me, if I looked into this wood that's in front of me and I happened to see those two small greenish, brownish birds at the top of a tree, I'd be really struggling to tell the difference between them, but the sounds make it very straightforward. So that is episode 4. The next episode we will be heading south west to the Wood of Cree, which is an amazing reserve down in Dumfries and Galloway, to some beautiful old growth oak woodland and encountering some of the specialist birds that live there, at least one of which makes the most insanely penetrating noise that you can listen to in the field on headphones, in my experience. So that is something to look forward to.

Stephen Magee:

As ever, if you're enjoying the podcast, please do subscribe. Wherever you get your podcast, leave us a review. It helps people find us in the podcast jungle. And also, if there's things that you want to hear about thoughts you've got, experiences you've had I'd be keen to hear them. Let me know podcastscotlandrspborguk. That email address is in the show notes, but until next time, thank you for listening and goodbye.