It sounds a little silly to tell people how to listen, but attentive listening is a skill that takes some practice. When people lived close to nature, listening to the world around them was essential—for finding food, for defense and just to keep tabs on what was going on around them. But today a cacophony surrounds us in the modern world—traffic, heavy equipment, television, radios, sirens, barking dogs—blending into a mass of noise we want to ignore. We’ve trained ourselves to tune out much of the sounds around us. To hear wildlife and the sounds of nature, we must now train ourselves to tune in. We must remember to listen.

Birders, people with a serious interest in birdwatching, often have excellent listening skills. Because birds are frequently difficult to see, birders learn to listen as well as watch. Sound is often the primary sense for locating birds as birders zero in by ear and then search with their binoculars. Even then, they may never get a good look at their quarry, which is often high in trees obscured by foliage, so birders learn not just to listen for activity but to identify birds by their songs. That trained ear kept tuned to sounds around them means their conversation is often interrupted with, “Oh, did you just hear that downy woodpecker fly across the yard?" . . . Listen, there’s a song sparrow! . . . Wasn’t that a western screech-owl?”

While birders listen in order to identify the sound, many of us don’t have any particular mission other than enjoying what we hear. To practice listening, go in your backyard, or somewhere outdoors, sit down and close your eyes. Pay attention to all you hear. Practice locating the source of sounds by turning your head. Now go through the same exercise with your eyes open, but focusing on your sense of hearing rather than sight.

When you go out in the field, you can listen while on the move, but sitting quietly will be more productive. Once you are still, wildlife that may have fled or hidden at your approach will re-emerge. One day while on a hike, I sat down to rest and soon heard scratching and rustling nearby. I was in the open with no creatures in sight. Suddenly the soil trembled and up popped a pocket gopher, which busily bulldozed out a load of dirt and submerged again to keep tunneling. I would not have seen or heard the gopher, an animal rarely if ever seen, if I’d been on the move.

Humans have woefully small external ears, so lots of sounds pass us by. Compare our flat-to-the-head ears to the radar-dish ears of a fox, mule deer, or big-eared bat. You can vastly improve your ability to capture sounds by cupping your hands around your ears. Pivot slowly (remember that radar dish) and use the changes in volume and amount of sound to either ear to pinpoint the source of what you’re hearing. When it seems each ear is receiving sound equally, you are looking straight at your target. Owls, which can hunt completely by sound, use the same technique to locate prey. As the owl orients its head to equalize sound to its ears (which, unlike ours, are asymmetrical) the source of the sound is aligned to the bird’s line of vision, and it targets in for the attack. Owls can pinpoint and strike a prey animal accurately to within a fraction of an inch, even in total darkness, using only sound.

One trick used by birders to locate a hidden bird by sound is a basic form of triangulation. The people in the group spread apart, then all listen to the sound. As they pinpoint the direction, each listener raises an arm and points to it. The place where lines from all the pointing arms come together is the likely location of the hidden bird.

Some nature centers have specialized microphones they use to listen to nature sounds, often on nighttime walks. These highly sensitive listening devices have a large dish surrounding a parabolic microphone. When pointed at sounds, or even used to scan a forest or meadow, they amplify an amazing variety of sounds that are too quiet or distant to be heard by the average human ear. These aids to hearing let us experience the world of sound familiar to so many animals but usually closed to humans.

Some birders and nature enthusiasts play tapes of bird songs and calls to elicit response from wild birds. Tapes are particularly used to find owls, which are secretive and nocturnal. This technique can have a negative effect on birds, particularly during the nesting season as the birds expend energy responding to what they think is an intruder in their territory. The overplaying of tapes can stress birds enough to cause them to abandon nests. Better to just enjoy the night sounds and count any owls we hear naturally as a wonderful gift.

Next: The Sounds of Wildlife I

(The information contained in this issue of Colorado's Wildlife Company was accurate at the time of its original publication in the summer of 1999. Phone numbers, dates of events, situations/circumstances, and staff positions may have changed in the interim.)