In this Reddit video, a man whistles atonally to summon an American Bald Eagle for breakfast. Click on the video below to listen. Don’t be mad at my accidentals, you nerd. It’s atonal! I can only whistle atonally myself. It took me forever to learn how to blow a note. It wasn’t until my friend […]
Archive of posts tagged Birds
Whippoorwill
I am the whippoorwill that cries in the night. No, actually—I’m just a guy. But sometimes I do cry in the night. After sunset, you can hear whippoorwills sing their own name. Scientists call them “goatsuckers” in Latin. Guess how they got that name. There is not a poet born in America who hasn’t been […]
Red-Tailed Hawk Call
A screaming “kee-eeeee-arr” comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. The red-tailed hawk makes a cliché call as it soars. You’ve heard it in movies in a million mountainside scenes, as a leitmotif for Natives, and a non-diegetic joke. It’s basically the Wilhelm scream for […]
Wood Thrush Song
While wandering around the woods recently, I came upon a mutation of thrushes. That’s what a group of thrushes is called: a mutation. Ancient scientists believed thrushes mutated on their 10th birthday, growing new legs or something, which is strange because they only live 9 years. Scientists used to be so stupid, not the infallible […]
Red-Winged Blackbird
Everyone in America has heard the song of the red-winged blackbird. It’s one of those birds that sounds like a dial-up modem. Back in the old days, you had to fire up the internet and it played sweet electronic music like a chorus of annoying birds. Now the internet is always on and it sucks. […]
Geese
This morning I heard a pair of geese singing a song like this. The male honked on the 1st and 3rd beat, while the female hinked on the offbeats. Together they make a minor third interval, which always sounds like the top of a major chord to me, here notated in B major
The Common Loon Tremolo
In our last post, we covered the famous wail of the Common Loon. But that’s not the only haunting sound these birds make. Click the score below to hear the tremolo. When slowed down, you can hear the interval of a Minor Seventh. The loon starts around an F#, fires off odd tuplets of a […]
