Tulip leaves growing in Oakland, 25 Feb 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
28 February 2026
Yesterday in Schenley Park it was very sunny but without a spot of green. However, I found tulip sprouts in a garden (above).
Bright sunshine in Schenley Park, though not warm and not green, 27 Feb 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
It was so sunny that the rocks on the gravel trail made interesting shadows.
Bright sunshine created interesting shadows, 27 Feb 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
The early birds are already singing. Yesterday I saw and heard northern cardinals and song sparrows in Schenley Park. Here are examples of the songs you will hear this week:
Bonus! Did you hear the red-winged blackbird on the song sparrow recording? I’ve only seen a handful of red-winged blackbirds this month but more are coming. Meanwhile, common grackles are back.
Crows are legion in Pittsburgh right now but ravens are increasingly common. They present an identification challenge so you have to look closely at flying black birds. Here in Pittsburgh they are usually crows but you might see two ravens. Yesterday I saw a pair outside my window.
Many people think ravens are just “large crows” but this is not a helpful comparison because the two species are rarely close to each other. Don’t look at size at all! Compare Tails and Voice.
Tails: My diagram below shows the difference. Ravens’ tails are long diamond shapes. Crows are rounded.
Raven and crow tail shapes (diagram by Kate St. John)
Look at the tails. Who’s in the photo at top? Who’s in the photo below?
17 crows in flight (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Voice: Both species announce themselves and they definitely sound different. If you hear “Brock Brock” it’s a raven, “Caw Caw” is an American crow. Bonus in Pittsburgh: “Uh oh” is a Fish Crow.
This audio clip from Xeno Canto has both species: a raven in the foreground (Brock! Brock!) and crows cawing in the background.
Keep in mind that you do not have to identify every bird you see! If Tails and Voice don’t give you a definitive answer, you can just let the bird be “unknown” or “corvid species.” It’s OK.
Common ravens (Corvus corax) are well studied, highly intelligent birds who often have a lot to say, but we don’t know what it means. Not only do they make a wide array of sounds but they may use them in almost any context.
In the last 50 years of studying raven voices researchers found …
In a contextual analysis of raven communication, calls were shown to indicate more about what was not going to happen next than they did about what was going to happen next. Vocalizations also tended to inhibit behaviors of receivers rather than elicit behaviors.
Dank & cold walk highlights both Ravens (very chatty again!). Large flocks (100’s) of Winter Thrushes), Mistle Thrush, displaying Wigeons, Teal, Tufties, Great White Egret, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Buzzard, Mipits, Chaffinches, Great Crested & Little Grebes, Coal Tit, Siskins pic.twitter.com/LI37Njym53
If you think you can’t recognize birds by song I guarantee there is one whose voice you know. “Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!” the American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos).
Crows are especially vocal when they see a predator. If you hear this, look for the owl!
And there’s the Double Short Caw that I often hear in summer. (I have not found a recording of it.)
Caw-Caw. Caw-Caw. Caw-Caw.
Double Short Caw. A series of caws delivered in pairs, so that the interval within a pair is smaller than between pairs. Often associated with territorial bouts, Countercawing, directed out of the territory, and particularly with the beginning of chasing bouts. Function as call-to-arms vocalizations for family members.
Birdsong is coming to an end as the breeding season wraps up but birds are still making contact and warning calls. In a recent walk in Frick Park Charity Kheshgi pointed out a robin saying “Danger from the air!” a sound so high-pitched that I no longer hear it.
Upper frequency sounds are hard to pinpoint so a robin saying “Danger! Hawk!” should be hard for the hawk to find … except that robins making this warning call usually stand out in the open, as the shown above.
Learn to identify robin and starling warning calls in this vintage article. Unlike birdsong these sounds happen all year long.
White-fronted nunbirds (Monasa morphoeus) are at their most interesting when they sing in “group choruses of loud gobbling, barking notes, sustained for up to 20 minutes at a time, chiefly at the beginning and end of day.” — quoted from Birds of the World.
Dr. Wacker presented information on crow vocalizations at the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society in November 2024. To measure the calls they analyzed these components.
The team recorded crow vocalizations in various contexts and compared the spectrograms. And they discovered an unusual thing. Crows appear to be “saying” things in the silence between their caws (gaps) and the pauses between their calls.
Gaps between caws: Are longer in pre-roost aggregations (evening) than in post-roost aggregations (morning).
Pauses between calls: Are shorter while mobbing an owl than in pre-roost aggregations.
If you want to know what a crow is saying, listen to their silences.
Learn more about crow language in this Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society’s video. I have set it to start nearly an hour into the meeting, beginning with spectrogram analysis of crow calls. I’ve included this 15 minute portion here because it is so interesting. Click here to see the entire 1.5 hour meeting.
p.s. Dr. Wacker described an intriguing idea: The messages in human language come from our sounds. The messages in crow language appear to come from silences. Perhaps we can’t figure out what crows are saying because we aren’t used to listening to the silences.
Now that the breeding season is here the air is filled with birdsong from dawn to dusk. Birds sing to claim territory and attract a mate, but they also appear to sing for the joy of joining others in song. Is the dawn chorus actually a community performance?
In the 1920s British cellist Beatrice Harrison discovered that when she played her cello in the garden the birds responded, approached, and sang along.
Fast forward to modern times. Two decades ago in Chicago, musician Lisa Rest lived in a third floor apartment whose windows were level with the tree canopy. On warm days she played her piano with the window open and eventually noticed that birds approached her window and sang while she was practicing.
Because Lisa has perfect pitch she could tell the birds were singing in key with her music. Soon she became interested in birds, continued playing music with them, and started a blog named Goldbird Variations. The birds were especially drawn when she played Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Read how her journey began at her blog post below or click here to listen to Aria to the Goldberg by Lisa Rest in which she’s accompanied by house sparrow, house finch, white-throated sparrow and northern cardinal.
Though I can identify birds by song at home, it’s almost impossible to do in southern Africa among birds I’ve never heard before. To prepare for this trip I spent time learning about the birds I might see. Then I discovered their odd and distinctive sounds. Here’s a sample of some notable ones.
Babble: Arrow-marked babblers (Turdoides jardineii), pictured above, are gregarious birds that nest cooperatively and love to sing together. One or two birds may start the babbling song, then everyone joins in. Even after the cacaphony stops a few will mutter to each other. Babblers are members of the Laughingthrush family (Leiothrichidae). When I listen to them it makes me laugh.
Ring: The tropical boubou or bellshrike (Laniarius major) is a frequent singer with a bell-like voice. Contact calls like bou, hou, boubou or bobobobo give the bird its name but in song its vocal repertoire really shines. Boubous often duet in male-female pairs or two males in adjacent territories who call-and-respond so quickly that they sound like one bird. The songs are so amazing that I’ve included three examples.
Toot: The pearl-spotted owlet (Glaucidium perlatum) is the smallest owl in southern Africa, similar in size to our northern saw-whet owl. Though they aren’t in the same genus, the owlet’s call reminds me of a saw-whet’s toot except for this: The owlet toots louder and higher until he drops off at the end.
Shout: The hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) is just plain loud. His name comes from his extremely loud and distinctive “haa-haa-haa-de-dah” call which he makes all year long, especially at dawn and dusk. Hadada ibises are now very common in suburbs where people hear them every day. Imagine one shouting from your roof.
Today we’re on a birding drive through Zambezi National Park where we’re sure to hear the unique call of a very plain bird.
The gray go-away bird (Crinifer concolor) is named for the whiny sound he makes that, in English, sounds like “go awaaaaay.” All gray in color, he has a crest like a northern cardinal but he’s more than twice its length and 10 times its weight. Unlike the cardinal’s beautiful song the go-away bird sounds like he’s whining.
In fact he’s making an alarm call and all the birds and animals know it, fleeing or freezing in place while he warns them.
Go-away birds don’t fly well but they can clamber.
Though their flight is rather slow and laboured, they can cover long distances. Once in the open tree tops however, they can display the agility which is associated with the Musophagidae [Turacos], as they run along tree limbs and jump from branch to branch. They can form groups and parties numbering even 20 to 30 that move about in search of fruit and insects near the tree tops.
