![]() ![]() As you learn to bird by ear, you’ll find your hummingbird community will actually try to communicate with you. Young birds may send out intrusive chirps that sound like a male defending his food source, however they are actually just demanding attention from their mother.Įach species of hummingbird offers it’s own style of chirping, and once you learn these by observing the little hummers, you’ll be able to identify the species by sound without making a visual connection with them. Soft and short chirps are often from birds that are delighted about their nectar. Hummingbirds are very territorial, so you will often be able to identify warning sounds coming from them. Males will send out more combative sounds when they are protecting their food and want to remove others from the area. Pay attention to how soft and aggressive these chirps are. You will hear chirps during the mating season to alert others where to find them for courtship. Others will just be chirping because they are happy and healthy. For some, it will be to address their territory and keep other hummers away. There are many reasons why a hummingbird will send out a chirp into the world. Here are a few examples of the sounds a hummingbird can make. However, with patience and perseverance, you’ll be able to catch all of the sounds the hummers make and start knowing what their calls mean. They don’t really have a song like some birds do, and their sound can be as hard to hear as their bodies are to see. And though what I say is true, that season of my life is now distant and marked by naïveté, I am often reminded of those individuals who first made me realize how hard it is to sound different.Identifying the sounds the hummingbirds make can be a time-consuming, but rewarding task. I would be lying if I said I don’t think about their past insensitivity every time we are together. With time, I have grown in and out of friendships with many of the people that used to ridicule the way I spoke. As if their nicknames playing on my speech and my last name, Spica, were no longer offensive nor inappropriate to share. I had teachers that would banter with me about my “past self” as if that boy wasn’t still inside me and holding the same hurt. Even adults began to acknowledge me as a different person, as someone now worthy of being heard. Once your identity becomes that which is more palatable, more tolerable. It is truly shocking how the way you are perceived by others changes once you correct something like a speech impediment. Simply for the reminder that they are here too and occasionally loud too and that you can enjoy my beauty and my song even if it is bad and even if other people may not like it. But I guess I still want to hear them, and would mourn their absence deeply. I don’t like the sounds of squirrels either. What I didn’t know then is that what I needed to correct my speech impediment was two years in speech therapy, not a dry mouth and vain desire. To mitigate my lisp I would spit in a bucket for hours trying to get rid of that sound of salvia that made people laugh more than listen. When most people couldn’t have cared less what I had to say because they were too focused on disparaging the way I said it. When my speech impediment meant that most people would mock me in conversation, whether I knew them or not. It feels like so long ago, so far in the past it almost feels fraudulent to still claim it as my own experience. I searched intently until I was finally met with the realization: oh, so that’s what a squirrel sounds like. I don’t remember ever distinctly listening for the sound of any squirrels, but what I do remember is hearing on one particular occasion such a characteristically uncharacteristic sound coming from the oaks of my childhood home. Though I far prefer to write about the latter than the former, they both possess a sound that is equally unexpected and undesirable. Squirrels are similar to hummingbirds in that nature. ![]() A vex that makes your teeth ache like silverware on ceramic, a newly delivered package hugged tightly in styrofoam, hardened January snow beneath the foot of your boot. ![]() I ponder it every time I sit in the gardens of my backyard and encounter that far too high and honestly more of a pop than a squeak. It is a conundrum I have been faced with for a while now how to make a decipherable metaphor out of that preposterous sound. Maybe you will even hear it exactly as I describe. Perhaps you are reading this right now and thinking to yourself absolutely no way, but I earnestly urge you to (next time you are around a hummingbird) listen closely and you may just hear it. A not-so-pleasant squeak in a remarkably pleasant place and from an even more remarkably pleasant animal. I can hear it now-a sound like feet propelling off dry sand at the beach. ![]()
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