Best Winter Backyard Sounds to Hear Indoors
The first day of Spring has passed, warm, sunny days are coming, and soon I'll be able to open the windows, right? And then, like a cruel joke, the temperature dipped to 30ºF here in Eastern PA this morning, and since the bird bath heater was put away in a premature moment of giddy optimism, the bird bath had 1/2" of ice on it. It's another one of those days when I wish I was migratory!
You can see the birds outside, but your closed windows keep you from hearing them. So what's a backyard birder to do until it's possible to follow the birds South in the Winter? Birders by the hundreds make the best of it by flipping on their ChirpSounds wireless bird microphone systems and listening to the cheerful chirping right through their windows! There are many songs to be heard, but we also hear wings as they fly in and out, feet on perches, little squabbles over the best perches (pecking order?), and environmental sounds like breezes in the leaves above, dry leaves being pushed across the flagstones, and seeds dropping when it's really quiet. Sometimes we even hear seeds cracking open as the birds quietly eat. Having a ChirpSounds system lets us hear all of their activity, including the quiet sounds we could never get close enough to hear before. Now we have an amplified way to hear all of it from inside.
One of my favorite sounds made by birds comes from a species that will be migrating away soon, the Dark-Eyed Junco. They have what sound like little mini ray gun gun battles! When using the first ever proof-of-concept prototype, this was my very first, "what the heck is that" discovery. That was 15+ years ago, and I still enjoy them. I've also heard them scratching the snow away by jumping up and raking their feet backwards. So cool.
Listen to the video recording I made of them:
Another favorite Winter bird song of mine is the American Bluebird, but I also love the very high-pitched, sing-song vocalizations of White-Throated Sparrows. And who doesn't love the loud and cheery song of the Northern Cardinal?
We also pick up a variety of other songs from visitors and some that can be heard, but don't actually come into the yard. This is why one of the reviewers said, "It's like binoculars for your ears!" Those other birds usually include: House Finches,
American Goldfinches, English Sparrows, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmouse (Is the plural Titmice?), White-Breasted Nuthatches (had some rare-for-these-parts Red-Breasted Nuthatches too this Winter), Red-Bellied, Downey, and Hairy Woodpeckers, European Starlings, Mourning Doves cooing and flying with their squeaky wing feathers, Blue Jays, and "will-that-thing-ever-shut-up? Carolina Wrens. Rarely, we'll hear Pileated Woodpeckers and Coopers Hawks from afar, but have never seen them near our patio.
I'll leave you with this. If you're stressed or feeling down, I invite you to be whisked away to our little cabin by a wooded stream. Watch a 4-minute movie of a non-stop parade of winged visitors at my feeder, while Merlin identifies the birds as it hears them in real time.
Before ChirpSounds we sometimes heard a muffled Blue Jay or American Crow, but most birds just didn't have the volume to punch through the windows, Now we hear it all, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!
Click the image below to get one today!
