Listening for Spring in the Dead of Winter

The temperature has begun its descent to below zero yet again. Snow hides the layer of ice beneath it, and more snow has begun to fall.  December was benign, but the second half of November, January, and now February have all been very cold, snowy, and generally grim.

Fortunately, what I hear does not match what I see. 

As I do every year in February, I recently went to the Holden Arboretum in NE Ohio’s Lake County, listening to the first signs of spring. I saw on the OhioBirds listserv that there were Red-winged Blackbirds behind the visitor center, which is the first place I hear them every year. A few may have overwintered in relative quiet, but the birds that were reported apparently were quite audible about their presence.  I had to go hear for myself.

Yes, indeed – they were loudly and defiantly present in spite of the cold temperatures and snow cover.  But listen – who else was talking and maybe even singing?

A Red-bellied Woodpecker, the usual little flock of House Sparrows, American Crows…

Here’s another recording from that same location.

Did you hear a Tufted Titmouse singing a little farther back in the texture?  I know that particular two-note tune.  It’s a Titmouse song I’ve only heard at Holden.  Here’s a recording of that same song from Holden four years earlier: 2-22-11. 

I imagine you can hear that they are almost identical, but I’ll put them back to back.

What else is going on in this recording? 

 

This is the first place I hear singing Song Sparrows each year, and I expect to hear them in February.  Sure enough – two were singing already!

And what about House Finches?  They start singing all over our area at the end of January, and they are often the first birds I hear sing in the new year.  I’ve written about these late winter singers here, though, so let’s listen instead to what they say when they’re not actually singing.

House Finch calls sound to me as if they talking.  I was able to get fairly close to a female who was commenting extensively, and I think you may be able to learn to recognize their calls.  I’ll include a sonogram so you can see the sounds.

Black-capped Chickadees were calling as well.  They weren’t singing, but Chickadees always seem to have a lot to say.  

Of course, there’s the usual “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee,” but they have an assortment of other comments as well.  Here’s a few I heard in rapid succession, and I’ll include a sonogram for this as well. Some of those pitches are quite high!

The area behind the visitor center has both a butterfly garden with shrubs nearby and a lower, wet area with a tiny stream flowing from the butterfly garden’s pool into the large pond nearby.  There’s a park bench and a little bridge that puts me at the edge of the Red-winged Blackbird’s winter home.  

There are other birds in this sheltered area as well: Dark-eyed Juncos, House Finches, Goldfinches, and the little group of House Sparrows.  But I'm hearing some additional calls, and I'd like to get a better listen.

At this point, I invite you to picture me on my knees in the snow with my shotgun microphone.  Its base was supported on the bridge as I tried to pick up the sounds from the inaccessible area below and beyond me. 

Do you recognize the calls?  They’re birds that nest far north of Ohio.  Sometimes their calls are lighter and a little higher than the birds in this group, but I think they’re still distinctive.

 

Tree Sparrows. I always find these beauties here in the winter, and they will be the topic of my next post.

Until then, listen for the birds that have started singing and make note of each new species you hear.  See if you can identify the calls, too – there’s not a lot of bird song yet, so this is a good time to listen for the details.

When the temperatures are so bitterly cold, sounds of hope are like warm, spring sunshine.

Hollywood Finches in the Snow

January 27, 2014.  A lot more snow had fallen, and I trudged out into 9 inches on the ground with an air temperature of 11 degrees.  Fortunately, the wind seemed primarily up in the trees instead of close to the ground.  The city’s snow plows hadn’t yet made it onto the side streets, but people like myself had been shoveling and others were getting their snow blowers started.  I heard the wind, the city plows on the main street, the snow blower a few houses down from me and…



This song is defiantly cheerful, and rather out of place with the snow blower accompaniment.  House Finches are one of the first birds I hear in January – often the very first.  They are originally from the Southwest, but their response to daylight apparently triumphs over temperature and weather conditions and it’s not unusual to hear their first songs while snow is on the ground.

I trudged to the back of the yard to try to locate the singer on the other side of the fence.

Sure enough - he was singing from a utility wire above the back of a neighbor’s yard and the clump of evergreens where the noisy House Sparrow flock hangs out in the afternoon.   House Finches are as at home in the back yard as the House Sparrows, nesting in hanging planter baskets and under awnings.   If you have bird feeders, they probably will be there.  They will dine at the feeders or on the ground, and they’ll sing from the trees and utility lines.

Take another listen to the song.  It’s quite different from that of a Tufted Titmouse, Cardinal, Robin, or Black-capped Chickadee.   There’s a song characteristic that I call “general finchiness:” long phrases, few rests, little if any identifiable rhythm and no easily- identifiable pitches.   If the notes in this song rapidly run together without defining pauses, that’s actually a useful identifying characteristic.  Except for their call notes, Goldfinch songs are somewhat similar, as are those of the Pine Siskins that sometimes overwinter here.   House Finches, however, seem especially boisterous.



They also have calls that sound almost conversational, although their short “comments” may also erupt into bursts of song and squabbling.  These are not quiet, subtle birds.



Although I am a native Clevelander, I didn’t grow up with House Finches.  They simply weren’t in Ohio back in the 1950s and 60s.   I still remember my surprise when my mother pointed them out to me at her mobile home park in Lorain County (west of Cleveland) during the late 1970s.  There were quite a few of what she called “Purple Finches” all around the mobile home park, but this was absolutely not the habitat where one would ever look for Purple Finches.  Her confusion was understandable, as that was the closest species she could find in her book of Eastern birds.  House Finches simply were not birds of the Eastern US.

House Finches are actually native to the western US and Mexico – in fact, the species name is Haemorhous mexicanus.   They were captured and illegally sold to pet stores in New York City as "Hollywood Finches" in the 1940s and subsequently released when the pet stores faced the possibility of prosecution.  The relocated House Finches began to breed, and eventually began to spread.  (Jeff Mitton, professor in the Department of Biology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, has written a fascinating account of evolutionary changes in these eastern House Finches - including their songs.  It was published in Boulder Daily Camera on 2/16/12 and can be found here.)


But exactly when did they reach Ohio?

Thanks to the Ohio Ornithological Society, I found this species account that provided the specific information that so intrigued me. The first record for this species was in Lake County in 1964 and nesting was confirmed in eastern Ohio in 1976-77.  This exactly matched my mother’s discovery of her “purple” finches in her Lorain County mobile home park on Interstate 80/90 in Elyria.  Once she brought them to my attention, I started looking and listening for them in the Cleveland area.  They were indeed present, and by the 1980s they were common.

In the 1990s, their population here seemed to peak.  House Finches completely filled the large platform feeder in our back yard, and House Sparrow numbers noticeably dropped.  But then an eye infection, mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, appeared in House Finches in the east and many House Finches were not able to survive due to starvation and predation.   House Finch numbers now are considerably lower than in the 1990s.  Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, though not as prevalent, is still present.   Should you see signs of  eye disease in House Finches at your feeders, you should take down the feeders, clean and bleach them, and give the finches a little time to disperse before putting the feeders back up. 

House Finches have been singing for three weeks now, and they were singing after the latest storm dropped another 4-5 inches of snow on us last night.



Maybe January is a perfectly reasonable time to begin singing one’s spring song in the southwestern US – I don’t know.  But here in Northeast Ohio, it’s a powerful affirmation for those of us who just cannot bear one more snowfall.