Birding With Hearing Loss and my Blue Grosbeak

Hearing deficiency is a pernicious impediment to someone who wants to be a productive birder. As most any birder will tell you, it is often the bird's song that is the first clue to finding and identifying a species, as most birds have good reasons to remain hidden in forest foliage and other habitats. Bird songs are also one of the most beautiful aspects to appreciating the environment that one is living in. 

I've apparently lived all my life with a certain amount of hearing loss, especially at higher frequencies. I realized in my twenties that I could hear crickets in one ear but not the other. I suspect that hearing loss had other effects on my learning abilities, as I could not process words and language quickly and would quickly lose the thread of conversations and lectures if they were not accompanied by visual cues like subtitles (or more recently PowerPoint slides). I was hopeless at learning foreign languages, and I suspect the hearing disability was partly at fault (laziness may have been the other).

But birdwatching captured me. It started for geological reasons actually, when I was exploring the Hawaiian Islands. There are the volcanoes of course, but the stories of the native birds of Hawaii and their unique evolution caught my attention in a big way, and I started looking for the native birds with greater and greater interest. As a consequence, I began paying more attention to my unexpectedly diverse local species, and with the purchase of a camera with a high zoom, I was hooked.

It was frustrating at times. If I was birding with others, they would perhaps stop and say "there's a Downy Woodpecker singing", and I was clueless. I could hear many common birds, but hearing and identifying the rarer and more unusual birds was to me as incomprehensible as trying to listen to a conversation in Spanish or German.

Two things happened. The first was that after living for decades with undiagnosed hearing loss, I was tested and then fitted with some sophisticated hearing aids. As any audiologist will tell you, they don't entirely solve the problem of hearing loss, but they can help. Not by being louder, but by filtering out some extraneous noise so one can follow speech in noisy environments. It turns out that works well when trying to discern bird calls from the ambient sounds of the forest. My aural experience in natural settings was transformed.

The second was Cornell University's Merlin Sound ID app. I've been recording and reporting my bird observations on eBird for several years now, but didn't do much with the bird sound identifier. When I started hearing more bird species I came to realize that the sound app could be a great complement to a person with hearing loss. I cannot count the times that I left the bird app running while I walked a trail, and noticed that some interesting bird species were being recorded. I knew to start looking for them, even though I had not heard them for myself. I've been able to find and report new bird species as a result.

In June, I was using the Merlin app while listening for forest birds deep within Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in northernmost California. The app was listing the expected birds like robins and other thrushes, but then it started listing a Marbled Murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) repeatedly. It made no sense to me, since my limited knowledge placed murrelets as shorebirds and we were miles inland. I was curious enough to look it up to find that the bird spends the day fishing along the coast, but then flies inland, sometimes many miles, to their nests in old-growth coastal forests. Their nests were not discovered by ornithologists until 1974!

That brings us to our bird of the day, the Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea). The Merlin app is of course not perfect, and may produce inaccurate results (I got a Northern Cardinal on the list the other day even though one has never been seen in the area). I have a personal rule that if the app gives me three repeated identifications of the same bird, I will start looking for it in earnest. And that is how I found the Blue Grosbeak on the Tuolumne River Parkway. It's only my third sighting this year of the species, and only the second on the Tuolumne, so it was a real thrill to capture its beauty on camera.

If there is a moral to this, it may be that if you have hearing loss, it can make a big difference in your life to have it checked. You may be missing far more than you realize.
 

Two Uncommon Birds on the Tuolumne River Parkway Today

It was a delightful day on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail. I was on the trail early, so it was cool, and the river is still running at flood stage (a controlled flood, given the presence of a giant dam a few miles upstream), so there was more river noise than traffic. I've always had trouble hearing birds, but with hearing aids and the Merlin bird app, I've been making headway in learning some of the calls. I was at the western end of the trail when the app said there was a Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) calling. I get false alarms on the app quite often so I started it again, and the Blue Grosbeak popped up, again and again. I finally realized I was hearing it on my own too (not used to those hearing aids yet).

But I couldn't see it. It had to be close by, but aids boost sound, but don't necessarily provide directional capability. I finally caught it at the very top of a nearby oak tree, and caught a few pictures like the one above.

Why was this special? They are at the top of my list of favorite birds, but I don't see the Blue Grosbeaks very often. There've only been six or seven of them seen in the entire county so far this year, and I've only seen them on the Tuolumne Trail once before, in 2020. So that made for a fine moment.

But it wasn't the only one. There was another rare visitor on the trail today. It's also uncommon because we are on the migratory path between their wintering areas in Central America, and their breeding areas in the Artic and northern tier US states (although a few seem to breed locally). It was an Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi). Unlike the Blue Grosbeak, it is a dependable visitor, having shown up along the Tuolumne Trail at least once in each of the last six years. But I will typically see it no more than a few times in a season, so it was kind of neat to see both birds on the same day. And to have them both pose for a few pictures (especially the flycatcher with the nice tuxedo vest)!

The Olive-sided Flycatcher has suffered a huge drop in population since 1970, nearly 80%. Habitat loss seems to be the heart of the problem, as forests have disappeared in the bird's wintering grounds. I'm glad that parts of the Tuolumne River corridor remain for them to hopefully thrive into the future.
 

Two of the Blue Favorites in One Day! A Lazuli Bunting and a Blue Grosbeak on the Tuolumne River

Ever since spring, and really for two years now I've been waiting to catch sight of a Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena) on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail that I walk most days. I saw a plain-colored female a few months back, but I never saw a male in all of 2019.

It's nice to have good friends in any case, but it's great to have friends who also love birds and live in a place where they can clue you in to new sightings. Jeanne lives near the trail, and has had a bunch of birds singing in her trees of late, and she sighted the Lazuli Bunting AND a Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea). These quite literally the holy grails of my trail travels (well, okay, along with Hooded Orioles, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Phainopeplas, and a few others). But I don't think I've seen both of the blues on the same day before. I went over and we found the Bunting and heard the Grosbeak, but none was being photogenic.

I tried again this morning, and the first bird I saw was the Blue Grosbeak in an oak north of the trailhead parking lot. It was too far for good pictures, but I can't complain because just moments later I saw a small bird perched in the sun, and there it was. The first opportunity for a good photo of a Lazuli Bunting on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail (well, trailhead anyway).

I was actually beginning to feel like there hadn't been much happening for a couple of weeks on my birdhunts, seeing the "common" species for the most part, and not much that was new. I've been cured of that in the last few days.

The bunting stayed put long enough to provide us with a little concert (if you turn up the sound). It's a pretty song.

Ohmigosh It's Happened! A Blue Grosbeak on the Tuolumne River Trail!

Sometimes there are just eerie little things about birdwatching. I'd think it was almost supernatural, but I think it has more to do with subconscious observations that rise to the conscious level. It's this: sometimes I'll think about a bird, and it will appear. I know the other day it happened because I heard the bird's song. I have a lot of trouble with hearing certain pitches so I am not able to depend on songs as a way to find and identify birds (it helps a lot to have Mrs. Geotripper along; she hears them, I see them!). So I heard a distinctive song in the thickets and I compared it to the song for a Black-headed Grosbeak on my phone, and the bird suddenly appeared, wanting to know what bird had invaded its territory.

The other time it was about playing the odds. It's spring, and flycatcher species are arriving in the region, so I'm paying more attention to the particular trees and branches where I've seen them in years past, and thus I discovered an Olive-sided Flycatcher on the trail a day or two ago.

But today was strange because I've never seen a Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail. Not once in the four years that I've been watching for them. I've seen them eight miles upstream at Robert's Ferry, and I've seen them ten miles downstream, but no closer than that. It stands to reason that they would come through the area, but I've just not had the ability to pick them out up until now.

So I was walking the trail this morning. It was pleasantly cool and the air was fresh and clean following yesterday's storm. I saw a bunch of interesting birds that I don't see all that often, including a Hooded Oriole, a White-breasted Nuthatch, and a Green Heron. I was getting to the end of the trail, and I stopped and thought to myself that I still haven't seen the wily Blue Grosbeak. And there it was! It was just 30-40 feet away, and it held still long enough for a couple of decent shots. I have a feeling that I saw it out of the corner of my eye, saw the blueness, and thus began thinking about grosbeaks. Or maybe it was just ESP....

The Blue Grosbeak is a tropical migrant that spends winters in Central America and Mexico. They come north to breed, and our valley is near the northern edge of their range (although their range is expanding). It is one of the prettiest birds I've ever come across, and it was such a thrill to finally see one in my "backyard".

Surprise After Surprise: Blue Grosbeak on the Tuolumne River

It's one of rarest and most precious of my local bird sightings: A Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea). Until yesterday I had only seen three of them, all in one place, Ceres River Bluff Regional Park, over a period of just three days last summer. And someone else actually found the birds; I was following field directions just for the chance to see them. And that's it. Until yesterday, only two individuals had been sighted in Stanislaus County this entire year.

It's not hard to understand why. My county (Stanislaus) is relatively close the northern boundary of their normal range (although warming climate seems to be allowing them to expand their territory northward). The bird is a tropical migrant, so they are only around during the spring and summer.

So yesterday was the Global Big Day, where about 30,000 birders searched out and identified about two-thirds of all the bird species in the world (in case you wonder, that's around 6,700 out of 10,500 known species). I was out doing my part; Mrs. Geotripper and I set out into the prairies north and east of our town and identified birds at seven different locations (that's what we do for "recreation"). We found 47 species in total, but the biggest surprise was close to the end of the day. We were at the Robert's Ferry Bridge on the Tuolumne River in the Sierra Nevada foothills. We were checking on the Osprey and Great Horned Owl nests that we had seen several months back (Ospreys were there, the owl was not), when I saw a Bobcat wandering the bank of the river. I got one shot (below), and calmed down for a moment (I've only seen them in the wild three times). I then started counting birds again when a blue and chestnut colored bird flew through my field of view. The colors said "Western Bluebird", but I wanted to confirm, so I zoomed in on the bush, and my jaw dropped. It was a Blue Grosbeak!

The bird seemed to be having an argument with a Western Kingbird, and I got a shot of the two of them together. After a few moments it flew off westward (hopefully about 8 miles, so I can see it along the Tuolumne River Trail too).

Those were the two biggest surprises of a day that was filled with some neat surprises. It was a lot of fun contributing to citizen science efforts like the Global Big Day. The additional vigilance added to the number of Blue Grosbeak sightings. There are now 5 or 6 known individuals in the county.

Blue Grosbeak on the Tuolumne River in Ceres

This is one I was really excited about. Blue Grosbeaks (Passerina caerulea) are not all common in our area, as we are pretty close to the edge of their range. I've been watching the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail like a hawk hoping to see one, but the only dependable sightings this year in our county have been farther to the west, at the Ceres River Bluff Regional Park, and at the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge in the western part of the Great Valley. They've been seen elsewhere in the county, but not for years at a time.

So I delved into the records at eBird and found that some Blue Grosbeaks were seen at the Ceres park for the first time in three weeks, so I passed on my normal morning walk on the Parkway Trail and headed to Ceres on the off-chance that I would actually manage to see one. I haven't had much luck in situations like this, and the first results weren't promising, just a lot of Eurasian Collared Doves, California Scrub Jays, House Finches, and Rock Pigeons. I saw one bird across the river and snapped a picture, but figured it was just a European Starling, and I hiked on.

Ceres River Bluff Regional Park is actually an athletic field complex, but there is an undeveloped section of the park on a terrace just above the river. It used to be a walnut orchard, but the land was purchased by the city and is being returned to a native state. There are some ponds on the site, so it provides excellent bird habitat.

I was walking along the river and reached the northwest corner of the property and saw another dark colored bird in the distance, but this time the sun was at my back and when I zoomed in I saw blue, but not the blue of a California Scrub Jay. It was a Blue Grosbeak. I started snapping pictures like the one below, thinking that it might be my only chance to get any pictures at all. But then to my surprise it flow towards me and overhead, landing in the top of a young sycamore tree only 100-150 feet away. I was able to get the pictures above before the bird moved on.

The European Starling that I mentioned earlier? When I downloaded the picture at home, I found much to my surprise that it was also a Blue Grosbeak. I'm glad I saw the second one, because it would have been rather frustrating to think of a single sloppy shot as my only record of this incredibly beautiful bird.

The birders report that there are females in the park as well so I hope they are breeding and that they'll move on upstream to my daily walk on the Parkway trail.

ADDENDUM: Got a few more pictures the next day. Here is the best one...