Listening to Nature

When we left off last time, I talked about our perceptions of talent and skill. I believe that these stories I have been sharing are much more about the latter than the former. Part of my long-term goals involve helping you recognize moments like those for yourselves. The first step was giving you some techniques for developing visual habits. This time, I’m going to doing to same thing for listening.

Much in the same way that I contrasted ‘watching’ and ‘seeing’ last time, I would like to make a distinction between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’. The first is a passive process, something you do without even really thinking about it. The second is about actively perceiving your surroundings. It is this active listening that we’ll be talking about today.

Just like with the visual senses, I’m going to share some of the techniques and skills that I use when I am out and about in nature (and remember, nature can mean different things for each person).

1. Don’t be afraid of silence

This bit of advice actually goes back to my time in theater. One of the many important lessons that I learned was about silence and how people tend to react to it. Silence tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They feel the need to fill the silent void with speech of some sort. However, in a stage production, correctly timed pauses with no dialogue can be very effective dramatically. This is just as true in the natural world. If you can learn to accept silence, you will be able to pick up on so many more sounds going on around you.

This technique is easiest to practice by yourself, since our desire to fill the silence wars with the awkwardness of talking to ourselves. As you get more comfortable with the lack of active noise, try doing so with another person. The desire to engage in conversation will be strong. Don’t feel bad if you do so, it’s perfectly natural. However, try and add to the amount of time you spend actively listening to your surroundings each time.

2. Close your eyes

This idea is fairly straight forward. Limiting one or more of your own senses will eventually increase your focus on the others. Sight is a sense than can easily overpower your focus on the other four, since it is usually less subtle. That is why I chose to start with techniques that use sight, as it is often already more developed without any actual effort. Thus, such techniques would be much easier for most people to pick up on.

However, it also means that using the other senses can become that much more difficult. Therefore, if you feel you are having trouble with listening, close your eyes and actively focus on the sounds around you without having to worry about visual distractions overwhelming you. If you want, you can take this a step further and also limit your sense of touch as much as possible. Passive touch is easier to ignore, so it may not be an issue, but try standing instead of sitting to reduce the surface area of your body that is actually touching something solid.

3. Start with familiar sounds that you hear frequently

Like with anything new, I recommend starting off small. Begin to listen to your surroundings and try and pick up on sounds that you hear often. You will begin to develop a repertoire of audio that you can pinpoint almost subconsciously. Not all of these sounds need to be actual vocalizations. It can be as simple as the snapping of twigs or the sound the wind makes when it blows in a certain way.

One good place to start are bird calls. Now, before you object, no I don’t expect you to memorize dozens or hundreds of calls. I certainly haven’t. However, try and pick up on the calls you hear the most and are also highly distinctive. That second part is really the key. Trying to differentiate between very similar songbirds by voice can be an exercise in frustration. Instead, start with calls that are easy to tell apart.

I’m going to give some examples of my own auditory repertoire below. These are bird calls that have become ingrained in my senses and that I recognize without thought. Some of them may be good places for you to start, although the best birds for this may vary from place to place, so feel free to tailor your own efforts to suit your environment. Each bird will have a link to an audio recording that you can listen to.

Pileated woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus

This bird is a sight to behold, a woodpecker the size of a crow. They can be found in woodlands all over the eastern United States. However, while they are relatively common, they are also quite shy. You are much more likely to hear them before you see them. Their laughing cadence is also once of the most recognizable and distinctive bird calls and was the inspiration for a rather famous cartoon.

Mourning dove, Zenaida macroura

Occasionally mistaken for an owl, this bird got its common name from the resemblance of its song to weeping.

Barred owl, Strix varia

Contrast the dove with this particular owl. The sound is a bit more guttural and people usually remember it with the mnemonic ‘who cooks for you? who cooks for you all?’.

Eastern whippoorwill, Antrostomus vociferus

Quite possibly the most annoying bird call ever, mainly because these birds are nocturnal and because they will continue to call over and over. Some legends say that the call of the whippoorwill is an omen of death.

Black-capped chickadee, Poecile atricapillus

Found in the woodlands of the northern United States and into Canada, this might seem like a strange choice for a Floridian like myself. However, I grew up in New England and a lot of my formal ornithology instruction occurred in Minnesota, two places where the ‘chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee’ sound of this small bird is common.

Osprey, Pandion haliaetus

The osprey, or fish eagle, is an appropriate last entry in this list. While it has a broad range, Florida is one of the few places where it can be seen year-round. It has a high-pitched repeating cry that I personally have gotten used to picking out from other sounds, even at a distance.

After all that, some of you might have some questions. For example, ‘What does that peacock have to do with listening to nature?’ or ‘What about the other three senses?’. My particular stories draw the most from sight and hearing, so that is why I emphasized them in these last two posts. But what about smell, touch, and taste? For obvious safety reasons, I do not recommend using your sense of taste to explore nature without doing a lot of background research first. There are far too many poisonous organisms to be taking chances. Touch and smell are better, but even more subtle than hearing. For smell especially, using it requires a bit more ‘talent’ than the others (talent being innate ability, in this case the strength of your olfactory senses). I may decide to touch on those senses at a later time, but for now I don’t want to overwhelm you too much so let’s stick with just vision and hearing.

As for that peacock, his name is Picasso. He lives at the Everglades Wonder Gardens in Bonita Springs, a location at which I have been doing some volunteer work. While he is lovely, one of the more interesting things about him to me have been his vocalizations. Why didn’t I include any audio of him? Because the only good audio I was able to get comes at the very end of a video clip of something entirely different. However, I think both his voice and the behavior seen in that clip are fascinating, so I’m going to make them the subject of my story for next time.

Until then, keep practicing with seeing and listening in nature. Who knows what you might notice that never occurred to you before?