“It’s a strange irony that as we get older, while the physical side of our sound perception deteriorates, our powers of discrimination, our mental processing of the data, seems to improve. There’s no doubt that sensitivity to higher frequency sound diminishes with age. Having just passed 50, I find that the Roesel’s Bush cricket I recorded over 10 years ago, is no longer the loud buzz I remember, but a faint rather insubstantial hissing buzz. I have friends a decade or two ahead of me, who are now struggling to hear or have lost Goldcrest calls (some of the highest-pitched birdcalls). But at the same time I can now hear clear differences in some distinctions I struggled with in the past, to the point that I wonder how I couldn’t hear it before. Experience must build on our powers of recognition and discrimination. It’s a very satisfying thing the interpretive power built on an age of experience. That goes some way in compensating for the waning physical capabilities and I’m thankful for it.”

Geoff Sample p.17 Collins Field Guide to Wildlife Sounds

 

Geoff published a series of Collins bird sound guides from 1996 to 2010 in a pre-Xeno-canto era, and the lovely little book cited above in 2006. I lost my high frequency hearing so long ago, when it was considered OK for adults to routinely hit a boy around the head. So my hearing didn’t even make it to my first rock concert. My birding friends know this. I remember Arnoud and Bruce MacTavish in New Jersey staring into a scruffy patch of long grass as they pretended to hear the high-pitched song of Grasshopper Sparrow Ammodramus savannarum, all the time asking me what I thought of it. In Arnoud's memory I did seem to hear something. I’m sure I didn’t.

  • 00:00

Grasshopper Sparrow Ammodramus savannarum Frank Lake, Alberta, Canada, 14 June 2003 (Arnoud B van den Berg). Song of a male. Background: Killdeer Charadrius vociferus, California Gull Larus californicus and Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis. 03.027.AB.14611.01

Arnoud, Mo, Cecilia and I have been to a few music concerts together, with real singers this time… Gregory Porter was great, then another evening we went to see Taraf de Haïdouks, 20 traditional Romanian musicians who improvised together. Sitting up in the circus-like gallery of Paradiso in Amsterdam I noticed Arnoud had put in earplugs. Not like him to pay good money to go to a concert only to block out part of the sound. They started playing and it was loud.

At the concert's end the heaving crowds pushed down the aisles. Arnoud and I had come down different staircases. There in the foyer the band were playing us out, each instrument like a golden island in the sea of Dutch faces. I must admit to a little Schadenfreude when I saw Arnoud sans earplugs, with his head almost inside a huge tuba being played at full volume.

When we protect our hearing from damage, research shows that many of us actually keep good hearing into our eighties. The same research shows that musicians and, one hopes, bird sound recordists, seem to keep better hearing longer (Zendel & Alain 2011). Use it or lose it.

My own attitude towards losing hearing through ageing mirrors Dylan Thomas’s famous poem. When his father was going blind he wrote:

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

For the older birder like Arnoud or me the paranoid fear of losing our hearing linked to the sound blindness of poor perception deserves a poem all of its own. Despite such worries we have both learnt that losing a bird sound is a matter of distance and amplification. We can hear most bird sounds once recorded, and the amplification of a couple of mics linked to a recorder and earphones more than compensates for any inadequacy of our hearing.

What do I mean by “sound blindness”? At the risk of losing all credibility I remember one of my darker birding hours and shudder.

I was again with Bruce MacTavish and we were at Skala Kalloni, Lesvos, in some sheep fields bordering salt pans. A Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin Cercotrichas galactotes was singing on territory. Excitedly I had rolled out 20 metres of cables and was sitting back with Bruce and a group of random birders. Something was wrong. I couldn’t hear it through the earphones. I could see it. Singing. I should have been recording. I plugged and unplugged the earphones, twiddled the various knobs and controls. Despite not really trusting him, in desperation I handed the earphones to Bruce…

“Yep, I can hear it.”

I snatched them back. Nothing. Was this more mischief?

“Are you sure?" I asked. He took them back: “Yep”.

I tried again and slowly it dawned. When I listened carefully I could hear a far too familiar song of European Robin Erithacus rubecula…

My elder son would, for fun, constantly repeat “Dad”, “Dad”, “Dad”, ”Dad”, and then having got no reaction would suddenly say “Mark”. I would sit up and he would laugh. I had during the course of three kids learnt to shut out the word “Dad”. Discriminating in what I heard however, had caught me out this time. It's only now when I again actively listen to my recording that it sounds far less like a European Robin.

  • 00:00

Eastern Rufous-tailed Scrub Robin Cercotrichas galactotes syriaca Skala Kalloni, Lesvos, Greece, 5 May 2007 (Mark Constantine). Song of a male. Background: Crested Lark Galerida cristata, Greater Short-toed Lark Calandrella brachydactyla, Black-headed Wagtail Motacilla feldegg and Corn Bunting Emberiza calandra. 07.010.MC.05600.02

Why don’t we hear things that are clearly making a noise? Birders are always going on about whether they can still hear a Firecrest Regulus ignicapilla or a Goldcrest R regulus, and while I could explain more about that I find it far more interesting to ask, what other sounds are we missing that we are hearing but not actively registering?

The RSPB brought out a new guide to bird song just at the beginning of lockdown, written by Adrian Thomas (2020). It's very nice. In it he points out that for example the song of Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus could, at first, be dismissed as a Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs. There's a thought. Could I be dismissing redstart's song as a chaffinch?

I can remember when listening properly to a bird in the New Forest, Hampshire in 2012, writing that it had a song like a Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, so not out of my hearing range. And yet I suspect I am doing the robin thing again, but this time dismissing it as a chaffinch purely out of stupidity. Have a listen.

  • 00:00

Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus New Forest, Hampshire, England, 08:52, 13 April 2009 (Mark Constantine). Song of an adult male, with imitations including White-throated Bee-eater Merops albicollis. Also, some huit-plit-plit calls. Background: Canada Goose Branta canadensis, Western Jackdaw Corvus monedula, Song Thrush Turdus philomela, European Robin Erithacus rubecula, Common Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita and Common Firecrest Regulus ignicapilla. 090413.MC.085200.11

Walking yesterday with a kinder friend, Ian Lewington, while worrying about the collapse in Britain of breeding chaffinches I asked him if he had noticed many singing.

” I tend to screen chaffinch songs out while listening for songs I don’t know.” He said.

Aha, there it is again. Not just me and Adrian then having this benign, unconscious bias. I asked him if he thought he missed songs of Common Redstart as a consequence.

He pondered. “Common Redstart's song would certainly make my ears prick up… they might be like Common Chaffinch to you but not to me”.  Hmmm.

So without further ado, let's look at and listen to the redstarts. Appearance first though. Here are some helpful illustrations from Killian Mullarney and Richard Johnson.

Common Redstart has a brilliant song, but does it sing like a Common Chaffinch, Magnus?

 

Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus phoenicurus

Well, Mark, that comparison would never have occurred to me, but it's true that they sing in a similar pitch range and have strophes of a similar length. A reliable and simple way to recognise a Common Redstart song is that it tends to start with a few notes in a stereotypical pattern. Usually the first is a whistle and the few that follow are a slightly harsher sound. Together they sound like a little fanfare to get things going. If you like dodgy mnemonics, the bird could be singing "Here's what I heard...." since what follows is a string of imitations of other birds, local or from any location on the bird's annual journey. Common Redstart is one of our best mimics as indeed a couple of other studies have already illustrated (eg, Comolet-Tirman 1994, Schreur et al 2020).

Here is a Common Redstart singing in a forest in Lapland where bird densities are very low, and the next singer may be another redstart 200 m away. He mimics local breeders such as Wood Sandpiper Tringa glareola, Spotted Redshank T erythropus, Siberian Jay Perisoreus infaustus, Bohemian Waxwing Bombycilla garrulus and Pine Grosbeak Pinicola enucleator, as well as a tundra breeder that will have passed overhead while migrating further north: Lapland Longspur Calcarius lapponicus. Then there are European species that don't breed so far north, such as Green Woodpecker Picus viridis, Eurasian Scops Owl Otus scops and European Serin Serinus serinus, which he presumably heard while passing through the continent. His African wintering area is represented by Little Weaver Ploceus luteolus (a common species in the Sahel), Green Bee-eater Merops orientalis (Middle East and the Sahel) and Blue-cheeked Bee-eater M persicus (breeds in North Africa and the Middle East; winters in the Sahel).

Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus Viikusjärvi, Norrbotten, Sweden, 12 June 2015 (Magnus Robb). Song with imitations of birds from Lapland, further south in Europe, and Africa or the Middle East. Background: Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus. 150612.MR.212658.00

Green Bee-eaterMerops orientalis viridissimus Richard Toll, Saint-Louis, Senegal, 25 February 2020 (Dick Forsman).

Pine GrosbeakPinicola enucleator Uppsala, Uppland, Sweden, 21 November 2004 (René Pop).

Green Bee-eater Merops orientalis beludschicus Jaisalmer, Rajashan, India, 23 January 2002 (Magnus Robb). Calls pretty similar to those of Sahel subspecies veridissimus, despite sometimes being regarded as a different a different species. Background: Common Babbler Turdoides caudatus. 02.005.MR.00334.02

Pine Grosbeak Pinicola enucleator Tuolpukka, Norrbotten, Sweden, 13 June 2015 (Magnus Robb). Simple song of a first summer male or female. Background: Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus. 150613.MR.005938.00

It is worth listening to the entire Common Redstart recording, so you can appreciate the full range of imitations in the song. On our app, we have a full 12-minute recording (we can't upload more than 10m at a time). Besides, it is a very beautiful song. I have picked out 39 species that I can recognise, though there must undoubtedly be more, especially from Africa given that I am much less familiar with sounds from there. Here is what I could find:

 Common Teal, European Nightjar, Green Sandpiper, Spotted Redshank, Wood Sandpiper, Common Redshank, Green Bee-eater, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, Eurasian Scops Owl, European Green Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Siberian Jay, Eurasian Blue Tit, European Crested Tit, Eurasian Coal Tit, Willow Tit, Woodlark, Red-rumped Swallow, Long-tailed Tit, Bohemian Waxwing, Eurasian Nuthatch, Common Treecreeper, Eurasian Wren, Redwing, Spotted Flycatcher, European Pied Flycatcher, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Little Weaver, Grey Wagtail, Tree Pipit, Pine Grosbeak, Northern Bullfinch, European Greenfinch, Mealy Redpoll, Common Crossbill, Parrot Crossbill, European Serin, Lapland Longspur and Yellowhammer.

If you go to the other end of Common Redstart's European breeding range, in southern Portugal, its songs are very similar in structure, but the range of species imitated is rather different, reflecting the Iberian avifauna. Perhaps this may convince some sceptics who believe the resemblances to be merely coincidental.

Let's take a Common Redstart I recorded shortly after it arrived in Portugal this spring. Its imitative range includes mostly local species such as Red-legged Partridge Alectoris rufa, Pallid Swift Apus pallidus, Eurasian Magpie Pica pica, European Crested Tit Lophophanes cristatus, Woodlark Lullula arborea, Thekla's Lark Galerida theklae, Sand Martin Riparia riparia, Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus, Western Bonelli's Warbler Phylloscopus bonelli, Sardinian Warbler Sylvia melanocephala, Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea, Short-toed Treecreeper Certhia brachydactyla, Eurasian Wren Nannus troglodytes and European Serin Serinus serinus. An imitation of Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis is remarkable as there is barely any overlap in presence between the wintering pipit and the summering redstart. As for Africa, again it is represented by Green Bee-eater Merops orientalis. This is a fairly short recording; a longer excerpt would contain mimicry of many more species.

Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus Courelinhas, Coruche, Portugal, 09:57, 7 April 2021 (Magnus Robb). Song of an unpaired male. Background: Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto, Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus, European Bee-eater Merops apiaster, European Blue Tit Cyanistes caeruleus, Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea, Short-toed Treecreeper Certhia brachydactyla, Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs and European Serin Serinus serinus. 210407.MR.095715.11

Keep reading >