I’ve now completed four short collections of bird sounds, focusing on the most common birds found in our yards, neighborhoods, and Bay Area woodlands:
- Ten Backyard Songs
- Ten Woodland Songs
- Ten Year-Round Backyard Calls (including an overview of what calls are)
- Ten Year-Round Woodland Calls
Today we have the concluding chapter: Ten Bird Sounds of Fall. This selection will get you up to speed on the most common characters of our autumn soundscape (assuming you’ve already studied up on the year-round calls assembled previously), as well as give me a chance to share some of my personal favorite things to absorb through my ears at this time of year. We’ll start with a few songs, make a quick pivot through one characteristic non-vocalized sound, and then dive into the calls of the northern songbirds who come to mild California for their winter holidays.
1. Golden-crowned Sparrow
We’ll start with a repeat and a brief return to the world of song, because this is the definitive sound that begins the season: the song of the golden-crowned sparrow. Freshly returned from their far, far northern breeding grounds, golden-crowns often sing upon arrival in California from late September through October. Singing then decreases in frequency, though you may hear it occasionally throughout the winter, especially after rainstorms, and then again before the sparrows depart around April (though their song is often less prominent by that point, when the whole world of birds is in full musical eruption).
In its most classic form, this song is composed of three clear, high whistles descending in pitch, lending itself easily to various three-word mnemonics. Standards are “I’m so tired” and “Oh dear me,” while it was historically heard by despondent Yukon gold miners on the breeding grounds as “No gold here.” These are perfect examples of how human mnemonics, or memory devices, work, both imitating the sound itself (three distinct notes) and using words to evoke some more memorable human meaning (all three of these phrases have a melancholy quality that fits the minor key of the song). Variations include hearing just the first two notes or reversing the sequence of the last two notes, so that you go down in pitch and then back up: “No here gold.”
You can learn much more about our two crowned sparrows in our full-length essay on The Autumn Kings.
2. White-crowned Sparrow
Once you’ve gotten in the habit of listening to gold-crowns, you’ll soon pick up the song of white-crowned sparrows as well. These close relatives are equally or more abundant and have a song with a clear family resemblance (as do white-throated sparrows, a third and much less common member of the genus who shows up here in small winter numbers).
As with the golden-crown song, the song of the white-crowned sparrow begins with a distinct, clear, high-pitched whistle. It then shifts to a variable jumble of notes including short whistles, buzzes, and trills. Pick out the most easily identified part – the single long introductory whistle – and don’t worry about the exact details of the second half of the song when you are just getting started.
If you want to get more practice with white-crowned singing, note that we do have a resident breeding population of white-crowns (of a slightly different race, with a slightly different song) along the immediate coast, in the Marin Headlands or at Point Reyes, in addition to the wintering birds that come down from the northwest and fill up Novato and the rest of the Bay Area each fall. Those ones you can hear singing in spring. You might also want to learn the basic contact calls of these flocking sparrows, usually simple, fairly gentle little seets. Golden-crown calls are similar.
3. Fox Sparrow
The golden-crowned and white-crowned sparrows are the only new fall birds you will hear singing frequently. We do have more winter sparrows: the white-throated sparrow mentioned above, Lincoln’s sparrows near wetlands, and the big, chunky fox sparrow of woodlands and chaparral with plenty of low, dense cover. While these three sing on their breeding grounds, none of their songs looms large in our autumn soundtrack the way those of the crowned sparrows do.
The most practically useful hint of the fox sparrow’s presence is actually this chapter’s special nonvocal sound: the loud rustle of their double-footed scratching technique. (I’m afraid I couldn’t find a representative audio recording of this, but watching this kick-scratching video, you can easily imagine it.) In spring and summer, you can often predict with 90%+ accuracy that that vigorous rustling you hear in the invisible leaf litter under that heap of hazel and coffeeberry is perpetrated by the spotted towhee, a year-round resident. In fall and winter, however, you have to revise your predictions: it might be the spotted towhee, or it might be the scarcely smaller fox sparrow, their only rival in two-footed kick-scratching. 10% of the time it could still be someone else – a jay unburying an acorn, a thrush in a particularly noise substrate, or some other random rustler – but these two large sparrows are by far the most likely culprits.
4. Pine Siskin
This northern finch maintains a year-round population in the conifer forests of West and South Marin (as well as a small population centered around our little patch of conifers at Indian Tree), but is mostly commonly seen at residential birdfeeders in winter. Numbers vary: some year you will only see a few, while in “irruption” years, siskins may come down from the north in omnipresent flocks. Siskins have several calls, some of which are reminiscent of their relatives the goldfinches, but the most distinctive is a long, rising burry note: zzrreeeep! I’ve heard some people refer to them as “zipper birds,” for this sound that rises and accelerates like a zipper being confidently rushed to its zipped-up destiny.
5. Northern Flicker
As with siskins, flickers are present in Novato and Marin in small numbers all year round, but become more numerous in winter with the arrival of birds from the north or higher elevations. If you’re in a habitat of sufficient large and mature trees to provide nest sites, you can hear their territorial series of rising, crescendoing keek notes in spring, similar to those of pileated woodpeckers. But at any time of year you can hear their loud, single-noted calls, a resounding downslurred kleeer! that can be heard from a great distance away, when visualization is totally impossible.
Winter flickers are actually quite common, even in residential neighborhoods limited to young ornamental trees where flickers would never nest, and the key to picking up on their presence is learning to recognize these calls. They are loud, blaring bugles of announcement compared to many birds and not at all difficult to hear.
For more on flickers, see our essay The Ringing Voice, the Wings that Burn.
6. Cedar Waxwing
Waxwing calls, on the other hand, can present some difficulty on a purely physical basis, since they are so high pitched that many people have trouble hearing them, especially if they are not particularly close. In a newspaper column, I once likened the hearing of waxwing calls to getting into Narnia, since it sometimes seems like a privilege that is reserved for the young. This is somewhat of a glib simplification, since the waxwing-hearing window is quite wide and highly variable in its boundaries, but there is some truth to it: it is normal for older people to lose some of their high frequency hearing through a largely unavoidable natural process. Someday the waxwings may stop speaking to me too. I will try to listen very closely to them now while I can.
To be practical: waxwings fly around in roaming flocks in winter, travelling between berry-bearing trees in both residential neighborhoods and wild woodlands. These flocks almost always seethe with a jumble of high, thin, lisping whistles when in flight, and often when perched in trees as well. We mostly keep our eyes at our normal eye level, and it is extremely easy to utterly overlook the overhead flight of a flock of waxwings: becoming alert to these calls will multiply your number of waxwing encounters by a factor of five to ten. Really. When I go birding with people who can’t hear waxwings, I find 90% of them. What are you missing?
For more on the eye- and ear-opening process, see our full essay: Waxwing Revelations.
7. American Robin
I included the classic spring song of robins in my Top 10 Backyard Bird Songs and discussed it at length in my robin essay. But robin-listening is a winter activity as well, with these birds actually becoming more abundant in fall as migrants arrive from the north or high elevations. Robins in winter are similar to waxwings in their habits: they travel in flocks, often visiting berry-bearing trees and lawns in neighborhoods and wildlands. Flocking birds utter several different calls, but I would say there are two main ones you should start with, both of which you can hear in this recording.
The first is a somewhat chicken-like clucking given as a frequent contact call among flock members. The second is the explosive eruption that interrupts the steady clucking emerging from the depths of the foliage, a sudden hehehehe that bursts from a bird overflowing with indignation or alarm. Some sources refer to this as a “whinny” sound; others describe it as a forceful chuckle. Not a gently amused chuckle, but more like the unwilling and unamused but physically uncontainable laugh of a helpless tickling victim.
8. Varied Thrush
Robins, waxwings, and flickers can all be heard around the neighborhood. But for this “winter robin,” you need to go into the woods, preferably coniferous, moist, and shady. While those other birds qualified for this selection by their frequency and easiness of auditory encounter, varied thrushes get into this Top Ten list by virtue of strange and wondrous mystery. Their isolated, metallic, quavering notes on a single but variable pitch ring out from the forest canopy, either as solitary voices or as a suddenly enveloping cloud of unseen forest chimes as the whole flock finds their voice at once.
This strange sound is in fact their song, but it is one that you can occasionally hear in winter. The true breeding grounds of varied thrushes lies hundreds of miles to the north, in far northern California and upwards, so this isn’t a sound you’ll hear every day, even in the appropriate habitat. They seem to sing most often before or after rains, perhaps best as the sun comes out after a freshening deluge, and generally more frequently as we approach the spring breeding season and northward migration beckons.
To explore this sound in all of its strangeness, see A Chime in the Shadows.
9. Hermit Thrush
In spring, hermit thrushes are the undisputed kings of forest eloquence. There are plenty of beautiful forest singers: pacific wrens, Swainson’s thrushes, black-headed grosbeaks, and so on. But if you haven’t heard the spring song of the hermit thrush, with its pure, high introductory whistle followed by an ethereal strain of vanishing fluting, you need to. There is no better bird song.
For now, though, the call. In winter, the thrushes leave the forest. They spread out in the woods and in neighborhoods, subtly infiltrating our everyday surroundings to find bugs and berries in their discrete suits of brown, rust, and spots. Discrete, but not silent: listen for their calls, quiet chup notes given essentially to themselves as they forage independently in the bushes and leaf litter. Once you learn this note, it will help you to find them at any time of year, and will also help you to learn the similar notes of other small thrushes, including Swainson’s thrush and western bluebird.
10. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Kinglets are very common and widespread winter birds, but very easily overlooked. They are small, they are plain, and they never hold still for easy viewing, making them the bane of many a beginning birdwatcher.
I don’t see a crown! It’s in their name, it’s in their picture, so that crownless little thing can’t be a kinglet!
Kinglets usually hide their crown. Sorry. They are, however, also quite talkative: learning their basic call will help you to both find and identify them. The excellent Peterson guide transcribes it as jit or jiddit when doubled, as it frequently is. You may hear a series of jiddits given at intervals ranging from relaxed and casual to unceasingly agitated, developing into an unpausing series of ratchety notes faster than the typewriters in a 30s newsroom comedy.
Want more bird sounds?
If you missed the first five entries of this series, including the “year-round calls” chapters which feature many prominent fall sounds, you may want to catch up:
- What is Birdsong and How to Learn It
- Ten Backyard Songs
- Ten Woodland Songs
- Ten Year-Round Backyard Calls (including an overview of what calls are)
- Ten Year-Round Woodland Calls
- Ten Fall Bird Sounds
Header photo: Golden-crowned Sparrow by Andy Teucher
Very helpful – thank you!
This was so well written I hated to come to the end of it. Full of information and written so precisely when making comparisons to birds or humans or their habits you have a great gift in that area ✌️❤️🏞️🌍🌿