While spending time in a field, you could experience a very unique moment at dusk. You may hear the wingbeat sounds of a bird just before it flies overhead. If you know the sounds a bird makes when flying, you can identify the bird without having to see it. These types of sounds are what allow birdwatchers to determine what species of bird is present, only by the sound of wings.
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Optimizing Listening Conditions
Another important factor that needs to be taken into account is wind direction. If you are standing with the wind at your back, you will hear the wing beats very clearly because the sound is moving directly towards you. This is especially the case in open country when you are downwind from the locations where birds are flying, like river bends, ridges, field edges, or areas of low grass. In wooded areas, the places where there are openings in the canopy or edges of clearings with birds will concentrate the repeated sounds of wing beats, and they are good areas to focus on for presence of birds.
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Bug noises, thermal activity, and wind will all tend to be less active during these times, so they can be exceptional opportunities for birding. Birders may also be amazed at how much they will have to hush their gear. A loud pack zipper or a tripod that is shifting may drown out a gentle rattling noise or a rustle that is too close to cover up a mechanical noise. A jacket may do this as well. If you are trying to determine what flight pattern a bird is using, or to analyse what sound a bird is making, try to keep your head in the same position for as long as you can. This will increase your chances of connecting a sound to a bird rather than looking at so many different things.
Distinguishing Environmental Noise
Wind and traffic sounds are examples of white noise since they are constant and unchanging. Wing beats can also be constant and predicted. People familiar with certain bird species can even practice counting their wing flaps. For instance, they may know that a hummingbird beats its wings over 50 times in a second, while a turkey vulture does so only 2 to 3 times in each glide cycle. Most other birds are in between these two extremes.
Be aware of the direction and elevation of the sounds. If you hear soft and low sounds coming from the vegetation, it likely indicates low and slow flights. In contrast, clear and short sounds will indicate fast, direct flights high above the vegetation. In some less clear cases, a short sound recording and then playback at a slower speed indicates an audio phenomenon that the human ear cannot resolve in real time. In other words, the harmonics (considered to be the multiple frequencies in one sound) can be used to identify different species, even when overlapping wing beat frequencies exist, differing in structure.
Hearing is one of the most underused senses when identifying birds. Most birders tend to stop listening after they have identified a call or song. However, the sounds made when a bird is flapping its wings calls for a different kind of attention. This is particularly case when conditions are poor enough that the light is not great, the bird is only present for a short duration, and there is no song.
