Nest Material Workshop

 This is a great time of the year to put out nesting materials for the birds in your neighborhood. Inspired by the weaving skills birds use to make their nests, we headed to the grounds at Aberthau to pick out some art materials. We found feathers, flowers, twigs, dry grass and some fluffy seed pods.

 We decided these seed pods look like tiny hedgehogs.

I also added some wool yarn, raw sheep wool, old wool sweaters, weeping willow twigs and raffia for us to work with.

 The idea is to create a sculpture to present nesting materials for the birds. The loose bits are cut into small lengths: 3 to eight inches long and they are woven in for the birds to pluck out with their beaks. Any other loose material can be presented in a small basket. Tiny baskets can be used to present cattail or other seedy fluff for hummingbirds.

 We looked at photos of bower bird arches, and nests by weaver birds, hummingbirds and bush tits. I have been watching the bush tits in my neighbor's yard constructing a hanging nest. They use spider webs to hold their nests together, and make it strong and stretchy. Oddly, they are one of the few types of birds where other birds besides the mating couple help make the nest and sleep in it with them. Cosy!

 It's very relaxing to weave in a free-form. I like to weave at the end of a long day, winding down, slowning down and calming the mind.

 Et voila! A beautiful weaving with nesting material inside for the birds. Put this out in your back yard or hand it from your balcony and see what happens!

On the way to the bus stop going home, I heard a hummingbird and a woodpecker. I used the zoom function to take these photos.

I think this is a downy woodpecker--apparently you have to be a very good birder to tell the hairy apart from the downy, but it just says "downy" to me! Check here to hear the different between the two birds.

And on the other side of the road there were two more woodpeckers high up in the branches of the trees. What a treat. As I headed home after dinner and dusk was falling, just outside my door I raised my head and a bald eagle flew above me--another wonderful gift in a day that was for the birds.

Why Birds Vocalize

When you're training as an actor, you analyze the script and chart what motivates your character to say and do the things they do. "What's my motivation?" is the actor's cliché. The process always irked me because I think sometimes humans move in mysterious ways and we don't always know why we do things, no matter how much we analyze our motives. I liked to work with my actor's intuition rather than try to justify everything with the left side of the brain.

Why do birds sing? Well, most of it's about lurve and protecting and defining the home front. Male birds use their voices to tell mates they are lively and healthy and worthy suitors. They announce their presence to other males to keep them at a distance, defining territory with sound maps.

Bird calls are simpler vocalizations with many functions that ornithologists are still studying. One of the motivations behind calls is to keep in contact with mates, families, and flocks. Barry Kent MacKay in his book Bird Sounds: How and Why Birds Call, Chatter, and Screech, says that contact calls can help birds keep together in dark or foggy weather, keep the chicks close, or confuse predators. I am moved by his comment on contact calls: "Possibly for some species, it is a means of reassuring themselves that they are together and well, within a hostile world."

When you see a flock of birds, try to imagine what their calls are saying to each other. Why not observe humans and try to analyze our own contact calls. Perhaps twitter and texting are the new media for human contact calls. We enjoy the pleasure of checking in with one another, making sure we are nearby, safe, and not alone. It's the vocal version of comfort food. Humans crave contact on a continuum that depends on what kind of person you are (introvert/extrovert), what time of day it is (morning person?), and many other factors. We crave eye contact, physical contact, and vocal contact. One's psyche and spirit thrive on managing these kinds of interactions.

Birds of Prey and Roosting Corvids

This week a couple of bloggers I follow had interesting posts on birds that I enjoyed. Birdchick documented a merlin taking down a red-bellied woodpecker and The Peace Bee Farmer wrote about the role that birds of prey play in the bee yard. You may have heard that the BC gov. is going to culling Barred owls because they prey on Northers spotted owls, which are endangered. It's a controversial decision, and I think it is shortsighted.

On a completely different note, I was reading about Crow Hour in Burnaby because there will be an homage to crow hour in The Starling Cloud Choir performance. I am curious what time of day Crow Hour is during late January.

ETA: Crow Hour was around the 3:30 pm mark at 23rd and Main today.

The Starling Cloud Choir: Tea Party Birds

 The structure of the Starling Cloud song cycle will follow the rhythm of the day in the life of a flock of starlings. Just before the crow hour, the birds will have a tea party at the bird feeder. The starlings will mimic the song birds that gather at your backyard bird feeder. There are lots of bird call mnemonics that seem very suited to this subject matter, so I have gathered them up to study for this section of the piece. You can look for them at your own backyard bird feeder. Try birding by ear, or identifying the birds by the sounds they make without any visual cues. Now ask yourself whether you're sure it's that bird and not a starling mimicking the bird. That's when you need to look for the visual cues.

I have written down some birders' menomics for the songs of these birds, but you could try to come up with your own vocabulary.

The Usual Suspects:

Rufous Hummingbird: calls zeeeee-chuppity-chuppity chup (then the wings go zzzzzzz)
bzeet, bzeet bzeet chup chup, bzeet chuppity chuppity chup
zeet zeet chook chook chook, chookity chookity chook
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Rufous_Hummingbird/sounds

Black-capped Chickadee: call: chik-a-dee-dee-dee
song: feee bee-bee or feee beeyee, come to me
I think it sounds like P. Diddy
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-capped_Chickadee/id

Golden-crowned Kinglet: see-see-see- (hp)
I am not a chestnut backed chickadee
I am not a chicka (slow, paced) dee dee dee dee (quick)
["hairdo" reminds me of Elvis]
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Golden-crowned_Kinglet/sounds

Ruby-crowned Kinglet
ji-dit; ji-dit; ji-dit (rattly)
too-fritchyoo-fritchyoo-fritchyoo
tweedleDEE tweedle DEE tweedleDEE
Hedgy hedgy hedgy
[hairdo looks like a red mowhawk]
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruby-crowned_Kinglet/id 

American Robin: cheerup, cheerily, cheerily
cheer-up; cheer-a-lee; cheer-ee-o
tweedledum tweedledee, tweedledum, tweedle dee dee
cheery cheerio cheerup
allarm call: yeep yeep chuck chuck chuck chuk yeep yeep eep!
whinny: quick-wik wikwikwikwik or hee he he he he (decending)
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_robin/id

The Tea-Totalers:

Song Sparrow
Note: song depends on your region and there are many forms and subspecies of song sparrows
Maids-maids-maids-put-on-your-tea-kettle-ettle-ettle
Hip; hip; hip hurrah boys; spring is here!
Madge; Madge; Madge pick beetles off; the water's hot
sweet sweet sweet n'zreee sugarrrr it it it
sweet sweet sweet as MEEEEE put some sugar on it
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/song_sparrow/sounds

Bewick's Wren
like Song Sparrow; but thinner; more rapid
BEWR often sings "1-2-3 drink your tea-ea-ea" or "jzzzeeet drink your tea-ea-ea".
calls: plink, plink, skerrr
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bewicks_Wren/sounds

Spotted Towhee: drink your teeee!; wack! wack!
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Spotted_Towhee/sounds  

The Sweetie Pies:

Yellow Warbler:"sweet sweet sweet, I'm so sweet"
Highly variable song. Often three part, "sweet sweet little more sweet" or “sweet sweet I’m so very sweet”
Has an urgent, quick quality. Also, "sweet, sweet, sweet, sweeter than sweet!”.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow_Warbler/sounds



White-Throated Sparrow: "poor Sam Pea'body, Pea'body, Pea'body"
"Pure sweet Canada Canada Canada"
whistle: (slow, sustained)Oh sweet old (triplets) CanaDA CanaDA CanaDA (first two notes are higher)
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-throated_Sparrow/sounds



The Gossips:

European Starling: wolf-whistle (breathy), rattles, whirrs Whistle. Pop. Whirrrr. Zzzt.
kizzik--like a washboard
rack rack rack zeep!
Weee errr (rising, then falling)
they also imitate red-tailed hawks, killdeer, cowbirds, jays, etc.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/European_Starling/sounds




Resources:

The Unabashed Guide to Selected Oregon and Washington Bird Songs and Calls
(References to “eastside” and “westside” refer to east and west of the Cascade crest)
Compiled by Kelly A. Bettinger with input from many fellow birders 

http://fsc.fernbank.edu/Birding/mnemonics.htm

Bird Song: identification made easy by Ernie Jardine

Singing the Rain

This is a fantastic rendition of a song by Toto sung by a Slovenian choir called Perpetuum Jazzile. Watch how the choir makes the sound of a rainstorm. I love how they make the sounds of all the musical instruments using their voices. As I was walking in the rain today, I noticed how many different tunes and rhythms the falling water makes. I sang back to the rain, imitating it with my voice. This is a fun thing you you to do as you go on a walk with your family in the rain.

Have you ever noticed how some birds have very watery sounds? I think that the tonk! call made by ravens sounds a lot like a stone being dropped in water. Ravens have a relatively large bird vocabulary and can be heard a mile away. This past year, we've had a pair nesting up near The Nat Bailey Stadium and you can often hear them at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. The American Bittern makes a sound like oonk a lunk. I think it sounds like a very big stone being dropped in a lake. Listen here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website and see what you think.

Who Cooks for You?

A few years ago I went on a birding walk at UBC Farm with some experienced birders. It was fascinating seeing the forest and the farm through their eyes and ears. I was profoundly struck by how birders use their ears to identify birds and are able to pick them out of  a chorus of birdsong. We were sitting on a picnic bench after our walk, and the leader said he heard a Barred Owl. He told us it sounded like this:  "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" I listened closely and sure enough, I could hear it! Since it was daylight, it never would have occurred to me that we'd hear an owl in the late morning. The phrase "Who cooks for you?" is called a mnemonic device. It helps birders recall the library of bird songs they store in their memory. You might think of a different phrase altogether, or use phonetics like this: "hoo hoo hoo HOOO?" I think  using "Who cooks for you?" is so much more fun.

I've just taken a book with a CD out of the library called The Art of Pishing: how to attract birds by mimicking their calls by Peter Dunne. Yes, there are lots of silly puns to be made from the subject, which is why some birders call it spishing instead. Pishing is using vocal sounds to manipulate the behavior of birds using their distress calls and the calls of their predators. Pishers make bird sounds like "pish pish pish", to get songbirds to come near to assess the danger. Imitating the sound of the Barred owl then makes them come together and chatter, presumably because their is strength in numbers. The CD teaches you some of the sounds that birders use to help them call out songbirds. There is also an etiquette around pishing: 1) if there are other birders around, ask them if they mind if you pish 2) don't pish in the early morning when birds need to fee the most 3) Don't pish if there are a lot of actual predators around the birds because you'll stress them out and confuse them.

The Starling Cloud Choir (see the post above): For our purposes, using the human voice to imitate birdsong is the way we will create little clouds of birdsong in the garden. So take a listen to this Barred Owl song and get practicing!

Birding Basics for Kids

I am excited to announce an upcoming project that I'll be involved in at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden. In March, our artist collective Second Site will be creating rain-powered and rain-inspired site-specific art in the garden. For my part, I will be directing a performance art choir that you and your family can join. We'll be improvising a sound piece inspired by rain and phonetic bird calls on Saturday March 16. Stay tuned for more information!

As you follow this blog I will document the process of research and creation for this piece which is called A Cloud of Starlings. One of the resources I'm going to share with you today is a great little podcast from NPR on how to get your kids interested in birding. If your family has already done some bird watching, then this might be too basic for you, but for others, it gives some great ideas to the beginning birder, including keeping a diary of all your sightings. The podcast is called How Birds Can Capture a Kid's Imagination.

If you've got older kids, say 12 and up, I highly recommend watching The Big Year with Steve Martin and Jack Black. You might want to watch the trailer to see if it's suitable for your family. It's an adventure comedy about three birders who compete to see how many birds they can see and hear in North America in one year. I love the sound track too! The irony is that scenes of the movie were shot in B.C., including the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Classical Garden. Cool!