What the Future of Looking for Birds Sounds Like

So there you are in the woods, birding. You're looking out for a particular species—the Nelson's sparrow, say. You wait around, and wait around. Nothing.

Then you hear it: crt tshhhhhhhjut. And then once more, a severe crt tshhhhhhhjut. You pull up the Nelson's sparrow entry in the new birdwatching app on your phone, listen to the audio clip provided, and sure enough: crt tshhhhhhhjut. Spot on. The calls match. You set off in the direction that you heard the song and there it is, clear as a day, a Nelson's sparrow perched on some tall grass.

Welcome to the new age of looking for birds. The quiet pasttime is experiencing a sort of renaissance, with guides like Sibley eGuide and iBird that include sound libraries full of species-specific calls playing to an age-old law of the woods: Birding is as much about listening as it is looking.

It's what distinguishes a birder's birder from a mere birder. Just replay the above scenario, only with yesteryear's technology. You rifle through a tattered old paperback field guide to birds, that old Stokes Guide you always carry on you, find the Nelson's sparrow entry, and sure enough: “A harsh unmusical crt tshhhhhhhjut.”

You think what you heard somewhere off to the right was a Nelson's sparrow, then. But really, how can you be sure the crt tshhhhhhhjut you think you heard exactly matches the "crt tshhhhhhhjut" spelled, not sounded out in your field guide? You try giving it voice, but you're a human, not a bird. You just sound like an idiot. So seeing as you're more unsure than sure that you did indeed hear a Nelson's sparrow, you decide to stay put. You go home an hour later, having seen nothing.

"Relating a bird’s call in a paper guide can be hilariously futile," Nicholas Lund writes over at Slate. "The truth is that birds are most often heard and not seen, and a keen ear for birds’ unique songs, calls, chip notes, and flight sounds is what distinguishes the best of birders."

By including subtleties like waveform and spectrograph (above), plus multiple voicings and the option to loop calls, today's new flock of digital birding guides take a lot of the guessing and challenge out of the equation. (Which, of course, many birding purists would say is precisely the fun of looking for unusual, sometimes rare fowl.) Or just an overly secretive Nelson's sparrow.

Not to harsh on the Stokes Guide, the iconic Audubon, or any other ink-and-paper birding guides for that matter. But there's just no getting around the fact that those beautiful, and in some cases gorgeously handdrawn indexes literally fall silent next to, well, apps.

"The inclusion of actual audio with images into one device has proven incredibly useful for learning in the field," Lund added.

In case you're wondering, neither Sibley nor iBird allow you to tweet your sightings.

@thebanderson