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| Le Conte's Sparrow |
As I’ve been going through old radio programs for archiving,
I made the disconcerting discovery that I’d unwittingly done a program in
November 2006 about the exact day that I permanently damaged my hearing. Up
through 2006, I was easily finding Le Conte’s Sparrows by song along my
mother-in-law’s driveway in Port Wing, Wisconsin—my hearing was still quite good to pick them out easily. Most of my life, I’ve been the first in
birding groups to pick up distant bird songs—especially high frequency
ones—only lagging behind others occasionally on the low-frequency sounds of Ruffed
Grouse, American Bitterns, and Great Horned Owls. I first discovered the Rufous
Hummingbird in my yard in November 2004 because I could hear her beating wing
beats out a tightly closed window facing my back—I remembered that thanks to one of those old radio programs.
Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios in Orlando in 2006 was apparently the event that ruined my ears.
I recounted this experience on "For the Birds" long before I realized my hearing
was permanently damaged—my point was to remind listeners that to protect our
hearing we should wear earplugs at loud events.
My son works at Disney World. When we go there, I always
have my binoculars along to see what wild birds I can—Swallow-tailed Kites circling
on thermals over the parking lots, a Limpkin wandering along the shore of a
stream on the parade route, Great Egrets and White Ibies mooching at every
outdoor eatery. I’m not big on the rides and attractions, but the give-and-take
of family excursions requires me to not complain, just as no one is allowed to
complain when it’s my turn to pick out the day’s activities and I drag them all
to Lake Kissimmee State Park, Merritt Island National Wildlife
Refuge, or the Viera Wetlands.
But that Halloween Horror Night at Universal in 2006 was the
loudest of Orlando's attractions I’ve ever dealt with. I said on that "For the Birds" program that my
ears were ringing for hours afterward. I should have realized at the time that that was a
serious symptom—I didn’t put two and two together until I came across that old
program this week.
The following spring, in May 2007, I went to Oklahoma and spent time in the
Wichita Mountains with Joe Grzybowski. I had trouble picking out some distant Black-capped Vireos that he had no trouble hearing. That was the first
time in my life I’d birded with anyone who could hear things before I could. Later
that month was when I first noticed that Troy Walters, my co-instructor for a
birding elderhostel, was picking out birds before I was. So yep—it was
Halloween 2006 that my hearing went south.
The spring and early summer of 2007 was the first year I
didn’t hear any Le Conte’s Sparrows in Port Wing. It was also the second year
that I DID hear one on my Breeding Bird Survey, at pretty close range. And that
was the trick—I knew I could still
hear them because I could pick out one at very close range, but when we start
losing our hearing at a particular frequency, it doesn’t go all at once—we just
need to be closer and closer to the sound source to pick it up. My auditory
world was shrinking without my being aware. I didn’t realize that the lower
numbers of individual warblers I was hearing on my survey route were more likely a
result of my hearing loss than of a decreasing number of birds singing.
Fortunately, the next year I started working at Cornell and
had to give up my Breeding Bird Survey route, so data based on my damaged
hearing was limited to one year. Ironically, the person who took over my route
has hearing more damaged than mine, but for a long time he’s been using both
hearing aids and Lang Elliott’s wonderful SongFinder—the pocket-sized
device and headphones that lower high-frequency songs—so the Breeding Bird
Survey results for this route are back on track and safe in his hands.
It took years for me to finally accept that I wasn’t hearing
as well as I used to, and it wasn’t until 2015 that I finally got both hearing
aids and the SongFinder. They’re making a huge difference in my ability to pick up distant birds again. But in the future, if anyone wants me to go along to a Halloween
Horror Night, I'll just say no.
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| Black-capped Vireo |