How to Hear Like a Champion Birder - Issue 50: Emergence
▻http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/how-to-hear-like-a-champion-birder
On a recent rainy morning in Brooklyn, Tom Stephenson, smiling and serious, dressed in khaki quick dry and a baseball cap with a Cerulean warbler insignia, stepped into Prospect Park, 526 acres of sweeping lawns, forest, lakes, and winding paths. Through layers of car honks, distant jackhammers, and chatty joggers, Stephenson heard a delicate, high pitched trill. “Cedar waxwing,” he said. Walking beneath a canopy of dogwood trees, he called out, “Robin, robin, catbird.” The catbird was mimicking other birds, he said, stringing together a jumble of song fragments. It sounded like a distracted robin. “A hairy woodpecker!” he exclaimed. “Another robin, a yellow warbler.” For Stephenson, bird watching is bird hearing. Over the past 40 years, he’s tuned his ear to the canopy. Stephenson is famous (...)