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How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

allaboutbirds.org

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Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#21

Post by AlotOfReading »

haunter wrote: post #16

Is there a guide how to spot them? I live near a massive forest and I always hear them but never managed to actually see one. The sound is just coming from all over the place.

It might sound silly, but just close your eyes and listen. Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. Turn to see if the sound direction moves or becomes more distinguishable. Tilting your head or moving a few steps in any direction can help in some environments.

You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice. You might not be able to actually find the bird once you've found the tree. They can be hard to spot from the ground.

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#22

Post by lostlogin »

padolsey wrote: post #15

This reminds me of how it's possible to decode prairie dog communication into literal 'words' that specify location of possible threats (lookup 'Slobodchikoff prarie dogs'). It's remarkable. Only made possible by the curious–albeit eccentric–human sitting in nature and listening in true analog. And, on the topic of tapping, I imagine even the cadence of our keystrokes can be used to construct meaningful browser finge…

People identifying machine status by sound is one I like.

I’m in radiology and knowing what the MR scanner is doing from a few rooms away is something many of us can do.

‘The TR is wrong’

Presumably common in other fields with noisy machines.

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#24

Post by wrsh07 »

sohkamyung wrote: post #23

Doesn't cover non-US Woodpeckers, so not useful to me here in Singapore.

This is a somewhat ridiculous comment. The article says many things about what one should pay attention to in order to identify what species of woodpecker you're hearing, and I'm sure you could easily get a list of species that live near you with descriptions of their drumming.

Sample quote:

> It’s especially important to pay attention to speed and duration of the drumming

Imagine if someone described the different leaf characteristics (shapes, arrangement, edges, etc) and used local-to-them trees as illustrations. Is that useless to me? Or can I perhaps find an analog from the trees native to my city?

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#25

Post by 1659447091 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #21
haunter wrote: post #16

Is there a guide how to spot them? I live near a massive forest and I always hear them but never managed to actually see one. The sound is just coming from all over the place.

It might sound silly, but just close your eyes and listen. Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. Turn to see if the sound direction moves or becomes more distinguishable. Tilting your head or moving a few steps in any direction can help in some environments. You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice. You might not be able to actually find the bird once you've found the tree. They can be hard to spot…

> Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. ... You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice.

My grandfather would be able to do this almost instantly. We would be out on his ranch and hear them all the time; every once in awhile he would listen, turn and point in a direction to show me where the bird was that he spotted, and tell me what kind of woodpecker it was. I never saw the bird myself as much as he tried to point it out to me.

The man had hearing and vision super powers to me. He would spot edible plants in overgrown pasture and woods, spot a particular type of tree in the middle of a bunch of other trees and hear the location of wildlife stalking about the woods. And it was insane how much information he had about the natural world around us and the skill to utilize it.

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#26

Post by dreamcompiler »

silisili wrote: post #14
0x0203 wrote: post #3

Not listed is the red-bellied woodpecker. I've got one of them that drums on my gutters just outside my home office window every day. Multiple times a day. Fast, evenly spaced drumming with no variation or fall-off. Lasts 1-3 seconds. Maybe not quite as fast as the flicker, but close. I thought he was putting holes in my house for a while until I figured out what he was doing. I have a lot of flickers around too, but…

If you put a suet cage out, they'll usually go for that and leave your house alone. I used to joke that they'll let you know when they're out of suet, by hammering your gutters to wake you up at 6am.

I used to put suet cages out. Then I'd walk outside on summer mornings to find my porch and gutters utterly destroyed. Finally figured out it was black bears that came in the night trying to get at the bird food.

So no more suet for the woodpeckers.

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#27

Post by genewitch »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #26
silisili wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put a suet cage out, they'll usually go for that and leave your house alone. I used to joke that they'll let you know when they're out of suet, by hammering your gutters to wake you up at 6am.

I used to put suet cages out. Then I'd walk outside on summer mornings to find my porch and gutters utterly destroyed. Finally figured out it was black bears that came in the night trying to get at the bird food. So no more suet for the woodpeckers.

if you have bears about you can't leave food out cmon people

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#28

Post by genewitch »

dangle1 wrote: post #13
weard_beard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what’s he saying? What’s in that tiny bird brain worth going on about at 4am? Cats? Smoke? Food? Bird problems, amirighht?

"Listen to how loud your babies will be"

This works in other species as well.

I guess if it's the end of the world the last people will go to the party.

Re: How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds

#29

Post by Slow_Hand »

Beautiful website.

Their media player with the spectrogram is wonderful and does so much to enhance the appreciation of each birdsong. As a lifelong synthesizer programmer and composer I appreciate the ability to visualize each song.

They even offer a quick-start guide for recording birdsong as well as a paid course to learn in greater depth. My kind of people!

Birds are endlessly fascinating and I'm delighted to see such a well presented ode to their beauty.

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