“Somewhere,
always, the sun is rising, and somewhere, always, the birds are singing.”
-Donald
Kroodsma, PhD
I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this in my blog
before, but, I like birds. I just really like them. There, I said it. So much
so, that I sought out and found an outlet for my bird passion and became a
member of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. It’s a great organization
dedicated to bird research as well as conservation and protection of the
environment to preserve species habitat. Planet Earth has so many beautiful, natural
marvels; so many beautiful creatures and yet most people don’t notice or pay
attention to any of it. People are too busy with their agendas. Their eyes are
open, but they’re not seeing. They’re
driving, reading, and scrolling on their phone. They’re looking down. Their gaze
is fixated on the computer screen. Few people actually look up. And fewer
listen.
If you open yourself up to your surroundings, you might be walking along one day and hear a
familiar “teek-teek-teek-teek!” of an alarmed Black-capped Chickadee. Or, you
may hear the answering caw of a far-away American Crow. You may awaken one
spring morning to the mating song of a White-Throated Sparrow. Or, when you
settle in to sleep some cold winter night, you might hear the haunting
territorial hoot of the Great-Horned Owl. Try it some time. Listen. You’re not
alone in this life.
As part of my membership to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
I receive their monthly magazine Living Bird. It is filled with articles on the
latest scientific research into bird behavior, conservation efforts, migration
studies etc. Recently, one particular article piqued my interest because I
found in it great similarity to my
experiences in language learning. Birdspeak is language, is it not? Just
because we don’t understand it, doesn’t mean there isn’t a significant amount
of communication going on.
Insert here Dr. Donald Kroodsma, university
professor (now retired), with numerous publications and accolades to his name
in the field of ornithogical research. He has dedicated his post-university
life entirely to birdsong, and to efforts in teaching everyday, non-scientist
people how to recognize bird species based on their song. In my recent copy of
Living Bird, authors conducted an interview with Dr. Kroodsma, asking him how
one can become familiar with a particular bird’s song. His answers, in my
opinion, truly mimic how learners of a second language begin to familiarize
themselves with the speech and meaning of words spoken in a language foreign to
them.
He says we can familiarize ourselves with a bird’s
song in, “...the same way we get to know people.” He uses an example of a person who moves to a
new town. That person starts to get to know those around him one by one,
starting with, say, the next-door neighbor. Once you keep listening to and
talking to that person, it is unlikely you would mistake him for any other
person when next you hear his voice speaking. Once you know him, you move on to
the next person and speak with him and get to know him individually, and so on
and so forth. You realize that everyone has a unique voice pattern and speech,
a unique dialect. Once you know it, there is no mistaking it.
He goes on to say that any given bird species has
multiple songs in its repertoire. For example, “..a Song Sparrow has about
eight different songs...sit an listen to an individual and hear him sing one
particular song over and over...after...10 to 20 repetitions...he’ll switch to
another song.” In this way, “..you
learn...how an individual bird expresses itself.” He goes on to say that once
you know the several songs unique to Song Sparrows as a whole, you will never
confuse the Song Sparrow with any other species.
I can certainly attest to this mode of learning as
it applies to the Spanish language. Yes, there is the generic, universal
Spanish language you learn in school. But not everyone speaks that Spanish. Few
people are “generic”. During my years
working at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and my post-residency years working
in the community, I have, unbeknownst to me, been applying Dr. Kroodsma’s
birdsong technique to my Spanish-speaking patients. I have spoken to and
listened to many Dominican patients, for example. I have gotten to know them
individually. I’ve gotten to know their Spanish individually. After a time, I
couldn’t confuse one Dominican’s Spanish
with any other Dominican’s Spanish. And, after a time, I couldn’t confuse
Dominican Spanish as a whole with any other country’s Spanish. Obviously, this
level of learning takes time. It takes patience, and it takes a willingness to
listen and interact with many different people in varying scenarios.
A final question posed to Dr. Kroodsma in this
article is of particular importance: “How can birders improve their auditory
memory?” He talks about 1) recording the song, so that you can hear it over and
over again. In addition, he talks about making 2) spectrograms of the song.
Spectrograms are line drawings of the song on paper, which visually highlight
the various parts of the song: the long, drawn-out whistles, the short, quick
chirps, the even shorter quicker trills. He says, “when I see the song and hear the
song simultaneously, the eyes teach the
ears how to listen.”
Insert here my long-held belief in the importance of
reading a language to strengthen understanding and memory of that language.
This is why I strongly support written language dialogue as a major means of
learning and growth in language. Dr. Kroodsma’s life-long seminal work has at
its focus the communication of birds. But the end result of that work is much
more profound. It is communication-- among and in between individuals and then
among individuals as they connect to the whole. To communicate effectively, we only need to take the time. We only have to look and listen.
References
“Get to Know Your Neighbors First: Q&A with
Birdsong Expert Don Kroodsma.” Living
Bird 36.2 (Spring 2017): 9.
Kroodsma, Donald. “Biography.” Donald Kroodsma: The art and science of listening to birdsong.” Wordpress.
Web. Accessed 26, May 2017.
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| Courtesy: Totally Owls Website |
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