If you’ve ever wondered what the birds are saying to each other, an upcoming presentation will help you learn to translate it.
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| Maine Audubon Advocacy and Outreach Coordinator Nick Lund will lead a discussion on interpreting the different sounds that birds make and how to distinguish between bird species from their calls during a presentation at 5 p.m. Thursday, July 23 at the Raymond Village Library. SUBMITTED PHOTO |
“It’s just like learning different languages and different accents out in the world,” Lund said. “When you put a little time into it, you can learn to tell the difference between a few species, and then over time, hundreds of species.”
The 45-to-50-minute discussion will include tips and tricks on how to identify different species, particularly notable Maine birds, such as thrushes, waxwings, wrens and puffins.
“The conversation will focus on the different sounds birds make and the different things that birds are saying, or have to say to each other,” Lund said. “Then we’ll talk about a bunch of different highlight vocalizations out there that people should be aware of.”
While many have heard common birdsongs, there is more to some bird vocalizations than the melodic tunes typically used for specific things or during certain seasons.
“The variety of things that they say would surprise people. Most of the sounds that are most familiar to us are the birdsongs, which are only given at a specific part of the year and have specific purposes for defending territory or attracting mates” Lund said. “But birds say a lot of other things that aren’t singing.”
“They make specific contact calls to keep in touch with each other. There are certain calls that are given between parents and babies. There are calls given in alarm, social calls that are understood across species,” he said.
Another surprise is that the national symbol of the United States and a Maine dweller, the Bald Eagle, is often misrepresented in the species’ appearances on television.
“They are not the thing you hear on TV,” Lund said. “Most of the time when they show an eagle, they play a Red-Tailed Hawk because it sounds so much better.”
While there are many apps that can be used to identify which birds are talking, Lund favors Merlin to help introduce people to the world of birding.
“Merlin opens the door to people’s backyards and to bird sounds,” he said. “It can be a daunting challenge when you’re just walking out there and hearing all of this noise, the cacophony. The Merlin bird identification app helps sort through it. But there are also other ways to do it as well.”
Technology can help, but the tried and tested methods used by people for centuries to identify the birds in their environment should be trusted.
“I would encourage people to learn on their own as well,” Lund said. “It can be done by all of us and has been done by all of us for years, to learn birdsongs on our own. It’s more satisfying to do it on your own.”
The local area provides ample opportunities for bird enthusiasts to search out different species, according to Lund and he says that he recently led a walk in the East Windham Conservation Area in Windham that found many birds there to observe.
The variety of habitats in Maine help provide the opportunity for a large diversity of bird species to either live or pass through the state.
“We have the sea birds who are not necessarily unique to Maine, but we showcase them spectacularly, such as the Atlantic Puffin that only breeds here in Maine in the US. We have boreal forests in northern Maine, the deep dark spruce fir forests that have a bunch of species that only live there,” Lund said. “We have eastern forests that run up through Windham and the southern part of the state. We have grasslands, wetlands, and lots of open ocean species that only spend winters here with us.”
“Maine is a paradise for birding all year round,” he says.
After seeing more than 350 different species, Lund says that vagrant birds, the birds that end up finding their way unexpectedly to Maine, can be some of the most exciting to observe.
“These are birds that do as birds do. They just fly, and they fly the wrong way, or they go too far and they wind up in Maine when they should not be in Maine,” he said. “Those birds are extremely exciting because you never know when they are going to show up or what it is or what’s going to happen.”
A recent example of an exciting bird that visited Maine is a Steller’s Sea Eagle, which found its way to Arrowsic and Georgetown in 2021 and spent several years frequenting the area before moving north to Canada. Native to northeastern Asia, the eagle, who was nicknamed Stella, was the first seen in the United States.
“Birders like me are just thirsting for those birds to show up,” Lund said. “This one came across the globe and wound up in Maine. That bird was just beyond anything we could have imagined.”
“It’s the biggest eagle in the world, with a crazy looking face,” he said. “It was super cool.”
At the same time, there are birds that call Maine home that are exciting to see because of their rarity or the remoteness of their habitat within the state, including owls which are both reclusive and few in number.
“There are birds that are rare because there are either not a lot of them or they’re hard to find,” Lund said. “There are owls that live all across Maine but it’s exciting when you see one because they are just hard to see and there are not many of them. Those are cool and there are a bunch of them in Maine. Bicknell’s Thrush is a bird that breeds in Maine, and only in a small handful of places at the very tops of mountains, right before the tree line ends. Finding a Bicknell’s Thrush after getting up to that habitat is a real treat.”
While many are smaller in size, the impact of birds on the environment is immense.
“They are an essential part of the fabric that weaves everything together,” Lund said, adding that birds eat insects and help spread seeds and pollinate. “Plus, they are an essential part of our love of our environment, because they are beautiful and they fly and they sing so beautifully. Birds are maybe the best ambassadors to the natural world that people have.”
Maine Audubon, located in Falmouth, is dedicated to protecting bird species, along with other wildlife that are found across the state and the habitat they depend on. The organization was founded in 1843 and includes education and conservation programs to preserve the wilds of Maine and advocacy to help inform legislators at the state and national level as to the issues impacting Maine’s environment. It is not a part of the National Audubon Society, Lund said.
“We love wild Maine,” he said. “We have tons of education programs and scientists on staff who are learning about it. We have advocates on staff who bring what we learn to Augusta and DC. We’re a full-service Maine wildlife organization.”
“We’re not just birds,” Lund said.
The Raymond Village Library is located at 3 Meadow Road in Raymond. For more information about Lund’s upcoming presentation, visit www.raymondvillagelibrary.org.<
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