How to talk to birds | Astacianna Hatcher | TEDxBrighton

[Music] close your eyes now listen [Music] open your eyes you just spent about 30 seconds in my office it's pretty nice right my job is to listen to the sound scapes of wild amazing places I've worked in the Amazon everything Africa out on open savannas I've walked through swamps with alligators still listening and I've dodged cacti forests in all these places my purpose was the same to listen to the birds because birds tell me great stories they don't tell me jokes or about the last book they read and quite unfortunately they don't whisper to me the secrets of how I can flap my wings just right and take off into flight that would be cool but they do tell me very personal stories about their lives about what's going on in their communities what's going really well what's pretty out of whack and maybe even what dangers are present that they feel might be threatening the future of their community because birds are bio-indicators it's a type of animal that's sensitive to environmental change and therefore they can tell us what might be changing what problems might be going on Birds rely on every part of an ecosystem the water the soil the trees so if a stream is contaminated the birds will tell me if there is an invasive plant that's growing so much that it's choking out all the native plants in a forest the birds will tell me that also there are many other things that we call bio indicators that are also sensitive to change insects also even mushrooms but birds are special because they're really noisy they're making sound all the time so they're countable just imagine for a minute spending hours in a forest listening to mushrooms I don't recommend or maybe I do you might hear something interesting but birds are always making noise and they're everywhere you really can't get away from them you'll find them in the middle of deserts you'll find them on ice caps and even out on the open ocean so we have this animal that's really loud and that's pretty much everywhere on this planet so that's an exciting opportunity for someone like me who wants to help conservation biology because they're countable I can just show up in a place I know what birds should be there and I can listen and see if maybe it is there so I'm going to show you just a little glimpse about what that looks like for me Here I am in a forest I Center myself I have my compass and I get quiet I take out my piece of paper and I draw a bull's eye I'm in the center each of those circles represents 10 metres away from me now I'm going to stand there for 10 minutes not really but for 10 minutes and I'm going to listen and do a rolecall who's here was present black-throated green Warbler Tristana Terry Warblers there's a downy woodpecker surface Northern Cardinal ah there is a hooded Warbler and an indigo bunting so that's what it looks like I stand there for ten minutes and I listen and I have my data sheet it looks like that it's not as pretty because I'm writing I don't have the pictures and that's exactly what I do so you might have a question why don't I just look for the birds wouldn't that be easier it's a good idea and occasionally I do look but hearing is so much more powerful than seeing because where my eyes go my vision follows as much as your parents might have told you they have eyes in the back of their heads they didn't I tell you that right now with hearing I can stand still and hear 360 degrees around me I can see with my ears without even having to move and I think you all can imagine this imagine some of the places I work dense jungles there vines everywhere trees I'm crowded in what do you think I hear versus what I can see so my detection rate is much higher how did I figure out how to do this how did I learn to listen to birds well it's not a job that I ever dreamt of doing and not even one but I imagined existed all I ever wanted to do was go to Africa I never come back I wanted to go there and be amongst what I call the Magnificent megafauna big animals really cool big animals the elephants in the giraffe I grew up reading National Geographic magazine I wanted to be in those places so I went to university and I studied wildlife biology on track to do just that and my junior year I took an elective ornithology bird biology Here I am on the first day of class I get my syllabus and it says that I have to learn 34 unique bird songs not just that I have to be able to identify them in the field so I'm going to be tested on this immediately I panic immediately I think this is absolutely impossible who can do that and my GPA shot no way right it turns out that it actually wasn't impossible I just had a knack for it little by little I picked up on the nuances of what different birds sounded like and it wasn't technical at all I will not make you happy if you want to talk to me about frequency and tone and pitch it's not that I just hear the differences there might be two birds that sound almost identical but to me one of them sounds drunk because it's slurring at syllables and the other one sounds like it's on speed because it's rapid-fire and it's not even stopping to take a breath there might be another two one sounds like the static on a transition radio where you're trying to get that right channel you can't quite get it or the fast sound of a zipper and I choose no new mnemonics I can't say mnemonics very well apparently should I use them as often as I can I try to get the bird to say something and sometimes it's something nonsensical sometimes it's something like Here I am Here I am Here I am where are you but some of them are just awesome in my opinion and they work really well for me and my favorite one is a bird called a white eyed very oh by the way that birds about this big it's not a big bird buts huge they're to me that this bird clearly says this give me a beer chip I hear it every time listen it's a little bit more musical kind of like give me a beer see you heard it exactly exactly so this is what happens I make a mnemonic and I connect with it and then I go to a new place where I've never been and I hear birds that I've never heard and I can't arrive there knowing everything but I carry with me this base of the songs I know so I'm in Puerto Rico I've never been there before it's my first day working on the job and I hear this bird it sounds so much like a white ivory Oh to me but I know they don't live there but it sounds a little too rushed and it even sounds a little bit rude and impatient so listen to what I heard so and there was a local I'm working with him and I say it's a bird it's like this small nod to beat that looks like this and he says cloud oh yeah of course it's the Puerto Rican very oh ah okay that makes sense so I have to get a new mnemonic right so if a white eyes area says give me a beer check a Puerto Rican very all might say something like give me your mom right now so impatient so that's what I do and that's how I do it and that's the method to my madness and it makes sense for me and it clicks so I take these things and I travel to new places this is Nicaragua and every single time I started with a few dozen Birds and then I have a few hundred Birds and my bird vocabulary keeps increasing and every time I hear a bird that I don't recognize it screams at me you don't know what I am that's all I hear so it drives me nuts and I stop and I listen and I look and I figure it out and then I check it off okay that's what that bird sounds like this skill has defined my career I started off as a wildlife biologist a very broad scope and it's just narrow me to the point that I became the bird lady not the crazy bird lady those in your neighborhood a different one so a line that goes on a quest to find birds all over the world just by listening to them one of those quests happened ten years ago I went to Ecuador to the cloud forest one of the most biodiverse places on this planet you have to go there it's amazing to give you an example I was working in 20,000 hectares that could have a thousand species of birds all of North America all of North America about 600 that are native to North America so it's amazing so I go there and I'm going to look for this bird it's very unique to this area the cloud forest is its perfect place it's where it should be so I'm excited I've never been there before and I'm really excited to hear it make this noise so whistle after that I can whistle so it's really hard to miss that sound right it's pretty distinct I am in this cloth forest for two months I go out every single day I survey I listen I do my method and I counted exactly zero white-faced on birds there was a vacuum in that soundscape and sometimes it's exactly what we don't hear that tells us the most because this bird should be there this is a perfect place for it to live the right elevation the right amount of rain the right plants everything is perfect but apparently it's not right because it's not there so that takes me to the central core of where I get all the time why why isn't it there in my mind I take it to the basics the three things all birds need they need a place to live they need food and they need sex we can all relate to that right pretty basic okay the place to live it's perfect everything I see is perfect skip to the sex it doesn't appear a lot of it's happening because there aren't any of them there so let's take a step back and look at the food what does this bird eat okay it's a specialist a specialist as a type of bird that relies on a very specific food source for example a type of algae and a stream a specific worm in a tree so this bird requires insects that live in native fruits fleshy fruits these insects that live inside of them and the bird goes into there and eats that insect ok so that gives me a clue to move forward and figure out what's going on come to find out there are banana plantations on the perimeter of this forest they're using a pesticide the pesticide is killing this insect so no food no bird right we go further and I think about this and it's not just a case of a missing bird and a missing insect it's a case of ecosystem health and the future of this forest because an ecosystem is a web everything is connected and you start taking a piece out and another piece out and you never know when the whole thing is going to fall apart and crumble and when I talked to the local banana farmers they got this they live there it's their backyard so they were motivated they wanted to do something to help the forest they wanted that song to come back so I worked with entomologist I worked with botanist I worked with a group of people who had specialties I don't have I have the why I figured out why is happening they have the how what can we do to fix it so we move it forward we have solutions we find a type of pest control that is organic and it actually works seven years later I'm thrilled to tell you that the white faced none bird is singing loudly again and this forest it's absolutely amazing and there are nests that we see that are viable the food came back and so did the sex so they're there it's a success story it's amazing so what I do I take my tool and it's my ears my ears aren't that expensive they're always with me everywhere I go I don't need expensive equipment I don't need a laboratory I just need my ears and I want to encourage each of you to do the exact same thing no I'm not telling you to take my career path I'm telling you the next time you go into the woods take your ears slow down listen pay attention you don't have to identify everything you're hearing just connect with it and I promise you you'll feel energized and you might just feel inspired and have this thought wow this place is really incredible and I want to do everything I can to not screw it up [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 6,464

Rating: 4.8596492 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Global Issues, Birds, Language, Nature, Science

Id: P3bFHZS0ZU4

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017