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I’m Losing My Hearing, Part 2: Keep Calm and Get Help
In Part 1 of this three-part post, I told you I’m having some trouble hearing the soft, high-pitched song of the Allard’s ground cricket (Allonemobius allardi). Now what?
Laura Erickson, writing in the October 2015 issue of Birding magazine, has some advice. Her article, “Cedar Waxwings—I Can’t Hear Them: Digital Bird Song Hearing Aids,” is for people like me. I’m not alone, not at all. The vast majority of birders have experienced at least some amount of hearing loss. Yes, the vast majority of us—keep in mind that the “average” American birder is a Baby Boomer. When we were kids, we could hear the 17.5-kHz squeal from the flyback transformers of 20th-century televisions, and many of us could even hear the ultrasound utterances of some bat species.
High-pitched birds like Brown Creepers and Cedar Waxwings are, compared to bats and flyback transformers, relatively low-pitched. Age catches up with everybody, though, and eventually many of us can’t hear certain bird calls anymore. But how can we know? It’s a classic catch-22: If you don’t even know there’s a creeper or waxwing calling, how do you know you’re not hearing it?
Keep calm and get help.
Laura Erickson has an idea. Go to Xeno-Canto and listen to recordings of the high-pitched species in your area. Like the Cedar Waxwing. Most birders in the ABA Area have access, during some or all of the year, to Cedar Waxwings. Here’s a waxwing recording (it happens to be by Yours Truly) from Xeno-Canto:
Numerous individuals can be heard in this cut from Boulder County, Colorado, Nov. 1, 2015. (Yes, I counted them: I saw 32.) They’re giving a variety of trills and whistles, varying in loudness, but pretty much right on the nose at 7 kHz. How do I know that? How I do I know they’re at 7 kHz? That brings us to another good idea from Erickson.
Don’t just download the audio. You also need to download the spectrogram. Erickson suggests downloading from Xeno-Canto, but the spectrograms on Xeno-Canto are static: You get a single image, formatted the Xeno-Canto way. No diss on Xeno-Canto, it wasn’t designed to test human hearing. So I’m going to suggest a slight tweak to Erickson’s proposed treatment plan: Generate editable spectrograms with the freeware programs RavenLite (good, basic) or Audacity (excellent, advanced).
Let’s see how this works with another geographically widespread, high-pitched species, the Brown Creeper. Here’s audio of the ding-ding call of a creeper I recorded in Boulder County, Colorado, Feb. 7, 2015:
And here’s the RavenLite-generated spectrogram:
This is the ding-ding call of a Brown Creeper. Boulder County, Colorado; Feb. 7, 2015.
Like the waxwings’ calls, the creeper’s ding-ding is about 7 kHz (bottom panel) and loud (top panel). If you can’t hear this recording, stick with me. If you can hear it, let’s raise the bar a bit. Here’s another creeper and another call:
This one, from Denver County, Colorado, Nov. 14, 2015, is higher, about 8 kHz (bottom panel, spectrogram below), and not as loud (upper panel). Note how it’s “wavy,” unlike the smooth trace of the ding-ding call. That waviness, or “modulation,” is what gives this higher-pitched call its characteristic buzz. Conversely, the smoothness of the ding-ding trace imparts a “pure” or “sweet” quality. Anyhow, if you can hear this 8-kHz buzz, you can probably hear most of the vocalizations of almost all the bird species in the ABA Area.
This is the short trill of a Brown Creeper. Denver County, Colorado; Nov. 14, 2015.
But can you hear Allard’s ground crickets? Recall from Part 1 that we listened to and then looked at the spectrogram of an Allard’s ground cricket singing softly at 8 kHz. I also mentioned in passing an even higher-pitched Allard’s ground cricket, singing right around 9 kHz:
Now compare his specs with those of the Cedar Waxwings and Brown Creepers. It’s not just that he’s high-pitched (bottom panel, spectrogram below), he’s also so danged soft (top panel).
Allard’s ground cricket (Allonemobius allardi). Boulder County, Colorado; Nov. 1, 2015; 3:02 pm MST; 73° F.
What does it all mean?
I experimented a bit with the settings on Audacity and on my computer, and determined that my right ear is fine up to at least 12 kHz, but that my right ear has experienced about a 30 dB loss starting around 8 kHz. Bird-wise, then, I’m good, for now, with 7-kHz Cedar Waxwings. The loud ding-ding call of the Brown Creeper is no problem at all, but I’ve gotten to the point where I should notice a difference in acuity, left ear vs. right ear, with the softer, higher-pitched trill of the creeper. With Allard’s ground crickets in the 8-kHz band, I have to get close to hear with my right ear; and with ground crickets in the 9-kHz band, I have to get even closer.
Equipped with this self-diagnosis, I scheduled an appointment with the audiologist. My findings were met with some friendly skepticism. Basically:
- Nobody needs to hear sounds that high;
- Nobody needs to hear sounds that soft; and
- Nobody would notice such low-grade loss anyhow.
They hooked me up to the gizmos, and had me listen to noises that sounded like Northern Saw-whet Owls. Here are the results:
X’s = left ear. Circles (and an inexplicable triangle) = right ear.
Things are a bit worse than I had thought. At 8 kHz the loss in my right ear is close to 40 dB, relative to the “20/20” benchmark of “normal” 20 dB sensitivity. And my left ear is down by about 15 dB at 12 kHz.
I inquired about hearing aids, and was basically laughed out of the clinic. According to the technician, my hearing is “normal.” And the doctor in charge of the clinic updated the technician’s assessment to “excellent”—given my age, gender, and ethnicity. I guess they were serious when they said nobody actually needs to hear Allard’s ground crickets.
Nevertheless, I’ve seen the writing on the wall. Like Charlie Gordon in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, I know what’s coming next. Unlike Charlie Gordon, though, I have access to a cure. It won’t be perfect. I’ll never again be able to hear the annoying squeal of old TVs, and the only way I’ll ever hear bats again is with heterodyne detection technology. But lower-frequency vocalizations—the trills of Brown Creepers and Cedar Waxwings, even the high, weak, tinny flight calls of Ammodramus sparrows—can be detected with hearing aids customized for birding.
I’d be a fool to forego hearing aids—when the time comes. It’d be like refusing to wear glasses. Laura Erickson’s article lays out your options. I urge you to read it. The article is so important, we’re providing it free to all birders. (Join the American Birding Association for full access to all content in Birding.) The best thing about Erickson’s article is its hopeful outlook. You won’t find any self-pity in her writing. She’s no Charlie Gordon. Her tone is hopeful, as I said, even cheery.
And that’s the note I hope to strike in Part 3 of this three-part post [check back tomorrow]. The good news, in part, has to do with technology. But I have even better news: Enjoying birdsong has more—much more—to do with attitude and outlook.
Join the American Birding Association at www.aba.org!
Source: http://blog.aba.org/2015/11/im-losing-my-hearing-part-2-keep-calm-and-get-help-2.html
