Warbler Neck, Birder's Ear and Other Ailments

(RE Berg-Andersson)

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” 

-- George Bernard Shaw

The birds sang around us as we walked the path through the woods at a federal park near where we live. Towhee, wood thrush, veery, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird -- all heard and tallied in my head as MH and I slowly stepped downhill.

He carries a stick wherever we happen to hike, even on a flat, paved trail, because of his knees, girth and fear of falling down. On this particular trip I left my stick at home, but I have had more than my share of falls, one of them on another trail at this same park, and so I walked slower than usual, avoiding the rocks, roots and areas where runoff from recent rain made the ground almost too smooth.

"There's a peewee," he called from behind me. "There it goes again."

I didn't hear it. 

It called about a dozen or so times, he told me. With all the birds that I could hear, it rankled me I could not hear this bird, whose call ("pee-oh-wee!) is its name. It is a thin and high-pitched call. 

This is not the first time he has heard a bird I did not. This has happened several times with the peewee alone. Unless the bird is close to where I am standing, I am not hearing it.

I don't like this high-frequency problem, another in a series of ailments that affects my birding and my aging life in general.

Like others of my generation, too much loud music heard at concerts or through headphones has damaged my hearing. According to the people who make hearing aids, 48 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. If I can't hear higher pitches, there will be some birds with faint, high calls (Cape May warbler, Blackburnian warbler, the aforementioned peewee) I won't hear. Rather than call it "deafness" or "approaching old age," I call this condition "birder's ear."

But wait, there's more. Hearing problems can also affect balance, something you need if you are going to hike in the woods alone. Aging knees are a problem when hiking up and down hills, frequently over rough terrain, and there are many trails we now don't hike anymore as a result. I have met people who watch for birds from the comfort of their cars so they don't put pressure on their legs. They won't see as much but they are content with what they can find.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not,. I always want to find more birds so I need my hearing. Long ago I realized that once trees leafed out I was never going to see all the birds calling around me. I would have to learn their songs. Since then I have refined that to learn tones so I can tell, for instance, the buzzy trill of the worm-eating warbler from the dry trill of the chipping sparrow and from the sweeter trill of the pine warbler. Although each bird has a different type of favored habitat, there are occasions when these overlap, such as the time I was in one park that had pines (pine warbler), fields (chipping sparrow) and brushy hillsides (worm-eating warbler) and I heard each bird singing.

So if I can't hear a call as easy to identify as a peewee's, I wondered, what else am I missing?

Busy birders such as me also get sore arms from poling ourselves along the trail, aching ankles if they are not braced and sore knees from walking for miles, especially around water or mud. And that workout includes standing still. Try standing in one place without making a sound for more than five minutes. (I find my stick very good to lean on.) It all starts to add up after a while.

Same with another condition that afflicts we of a certain level of age and experience: "warbler neck."

I consider myself to be in decent physical shape. I exercise and try to control my eating. For me, birding is a way of getting out of the house, away from stress and into nature. It also allows me to test my memory and keep my brain sharp. I never thought of it as exercise for those, like MH, who don't do a lot of physical activities. But it is, and no less an authority than Prevention Magazine recommends it for the sedentary. 

In the field (Margo D. Beller)

Of course, as in all exercise, no pain, no gain. And while I have seen a lot of birds in my time, they have recently become a pain in the neck. Literally. 

You look in the treetops for little birds flitting around and there is a ping that, after continued use, becomes painful enough to make turning your head hard to do. This is another reason I have been using my ears instead of my eyes. My bad posture doesn't help. Nor does wearing heavy, 10x50 binoculars. Neck pain prompted me to switch from the usual strap to a harness that spreads the weight over my back and shoulders. But a strap still presses on the shoulder near the base of the sore left side of my neck.

The National Audubon Society, knowing a trend when it sees one, has an article that not only lists the best exercises to help your warbler neck but provides a YouTube exercise video and a helpful list of "jams" to help you bust a neck move. 

MH likes to remind me birding is supposed to be fun. It is. As long as it remains so I'll put up with the ailments and, by extension, the aging. After all, consider the alternative.