We were walking the edge of the dunes at Stone Harbor Point, “we” being me, my son Tim (age 21) and daughter Rebecca (age 18). I paused rather abruptly and stood stock still, looking down and to one side, and Tim, who’s been around me for, well, 21 years, asked immediately, “What did you hear?”
“I thought I heard a bird,” I said vaguely. “Did you hear anything?”
“No.”
“Oh.” I had discovered with a degree of surprise about a month earlier that, in absolute terms (as opposed to bird i.d. terms) Tim now hears better than I do. I’ve been told I have good ears, but during a Christmas Bird Count at dawn, Tim said, “Well, the whitethroats are starting,” and I couldn’t hear a blessed thing. We walked in the direction he indicated about 50 paces, and then the “pinks” of awakening White-throated Sparrows finally dented my tympana, too. Perhaps those early years on the farm running noisy tractors are finally catching up with me.
Now it was mid-January, and we had enjoyed a good morning of beachcombing and birding, highlighted by flocks of scoters and gannets offshore, a perched Peregrine Falcon, an intact angel wing shell, and a Harbor Seal hauled out on the beach. And a thought-I-heard. We paused silently on the beach.
“What did you think it was?” Tim asked.
“Oh, I thought I heard a Snow Bunting rattle, but I’m not sure.”
We looked and listened for a few bunting-less minutes, and I finally said, “I must have been mistaken.” I reasoned that Tim would have at least heard the sound, even if he didn’t know what it was.
Ten steps later we flushed a flock of 20 Snow Buntings, confirming once again something I’ve been convinced of for years: When you thought you heard something, you did. At least most of the time.
Sound does funny things. I’ve birded with some remarkably skilled people, and it is fairly routine for one ace birder to hear something and two equally ace birders to miss it - perhaps they were breathing at the time, or their heads were turned the wrong way, or one birder’s body blocked the sound for another. Happens all the time. And what usually happens next (and, if you were the one who heard the bird, what you hope happens next) is that the bird calls again, and everyone hears it this time.
What sometimes happens, however, is that the bird doesn’t call again. Sometimes birds do that. Then you’re stuck, worrying your friends now think you are too hair-trigger, a “stringer,” or perhaps it’s you thinking someone else is a stringer. My advice to all parties is not to jump to conclusions.
Whoever heard the bird should try to give some specifics. Which call did it make? Was it far or close? From what direction?
If the bird was heard once, by one person, but not again, did it exist? Does it count? It probably did, and probably can, but that depends on the rules you play by. For the World Series of Birding, for example, no single-observer observations count. For me, if it were a rare bird, I would never count or report it based solely on a call heard once, unless I heard it perfectly and was absolutely sure.
And then you might need to ask, if two birders thought they heard a bird, and a third heard nothing, does that mean the bird was heard any more than if only one heard it? Are two people who aren’t sure still more sure than one person who is not sure?
This is getting pretty philosophical, but the bottom line, I believe, is that if you thought you heard it, you probably did. What you do with that is up to you.