Get to know your neighbors: listening to Illinois wildlife with Brodie Dunn

Abigail: 00:08

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast, where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Abigail Garofalo.

Darci: 00:16

And I'm your cohost, Darci Webber.

Abigail: 00:18

And today, we are here with Brodie Dunn, the extension outreach associate on biodiversity and pollinators, and he is here with us to chat about why you should listen to Illinois wildlife. Welcome, Brodie.

Brodie: 00:30

Thanks for having me.

Abigail: 00:32

Now those of you who are listeners of podcasts with Illinois Extension, you may think that Brodie's name sounds familiar. He has his own podcast called Voice of the Wild, and so we're excited to have him on, a little celebrity in the Extension realm, to chat with us all about wildlife sounds. So we are really excited, and why don't you get started just telling us about your work with Extension?

Brodie: 00:56

Yeah. Thanks, Abigail. So I'm an outreach associate. I do a lot of organizing for our team on campus, but when I'm not doing that, I'm usually working on wildlife, biodiversity, pollinators, these kinds of things. One of the things that I do in my spare moments, sort of between programs, is that I run this extension podcast called Voice of the Wild.

Brodie: 01:15

It is a Wildlife podcast about, or Wildlife Sound ID podcast. Make probably seem to be a radio show. By the time this airs, it should be a radio show as well.

Abigail: 01:25

Oh, that's so exciting. And so it's like, it's different than this podcast. We're very like an interview format, right, where we re we interview researchers and and outreach educators and things like that, people who are doing different work in the natural resources realm. You're like taking sounds of wildlife, and then kind of talking about them a little bit, and it's like short snippets, right? It's not like this forty minute car ride devotion to listening, it's like quick learning ID, kind of, is that what you're?

Brodie: 01:52

Oh, yeah, yeah. Very short, it's all me. So there's one person talking, and it's me. Every week, it's a new animal, essentially, new kind of wildlife that's native to Illinois, that you can hear in Illinois. I'll talk a little bit about sort of what where you can find the animal, what it might look like.

Brodie: 02:09

If it has like a complex call, I'll talk about the call and the things that you should listen out for.

Abigail: 02:16

Nice.

Brodie: 02:16

They're all two minutes long.

Abigail: 02:18

Two minutes? That's like Yeah. That's a great, honestly, like, snippet. I always find ID, like, especially sound ID, really overwhelming because it's like you hear it so quick, and it moves on to this. You can, like, listen to it again, and then get that, like, quick little, like, connection to it that we always talk about with, it's not just, like, oh, here's what it is, here's the sound.

Abigail: 02:37

That, like, little bit of description and some connection to it really helps you kind of connect that. And so, if you're looking to work on your ID a little bit more, I think I think Brody's podcast is a great place to start because you get this really great context with it while also not feeling really overwhelming.

Brodie: 02:52

I totally agree.

Darci: 02:54

There's a lot of different noises we hear like from birds to insects to like squirrels and trees. So Brodie, can you tell us a little bit why do wildlife make sounds?

Brodie: 03:05

Yeah. So that's a great question. So they make sounds for the same reasons that we do, really. You know, they're trying to connect to others in, you know, in some way. It's usually not as complex as our language that we're speaking.

Brodie: 03:17

We have this incredible technology of, you know, language, of spoken language, that lets us convey way more information using our sounds than most animals do. But in principle, it's roughly the same, right? By and large, what they're doing is they're connecting with others. Typically, on average, the sound that we are hearing whenever we are hearing an animal is probably gonna be one of two things. It's either going to be a way that they're trying to attract a mate, or possibly trying to keep conspecifics, members of their own species, out of their range.

Brodie: 03:50

So they've already found a mate, maybe they have a nest, and they want everything to stay away, either from their nest or just from their hunting territory.

Abigail: 03:58

I love that. I was I used to teach a lot of grade school, like, young youth programs. My favorite was a kindergarten program was about, like, different sensories, and there we'd be like, why does why do birds make sounds, and we're like, hey, you're pretty cute. I think you're cute. So I would always make the little kids give each other compliments to each other in that of bird call sound, because it's what they're trying to do.

Abigail: 04:24

So, pretty funny.

Brodie: 04:27

That's amazing.

Abigail: 04:29

There you go. Little education tip for anybody trying to use programming word sounds. So, Brodie, you're, like, really into wildlife sounds.

Brodie: 04:39

Yeah, yeah. Mean, you could say that, for sure.

Abigail: 04:42

You're like getting the sounds out, like you're and that's a I mean, it's just like such a specific aspect of wildlife, right? We think about, oh, I'm really into birds, and I like the bird sounds, or I'm really into this aspect, but like the way that they communicate with each other and make sounds is really interesting. I'm curious how that started.

Brodie: 04:59

On the one hand, you know, these wildlife sounds, so many of them are beautiful and wonderful, and I wish that was the sort of spark that got me interested in them, that I heard something just marvelously beautiful, and I wanted to know it. It is somewhat true that I did like my Sparkbird, my first bird was a wood thrush, and I did love that that sound, but the thing that actually got me, like, really invested into putting time into learning all of these animal sounds, was that I had these two teachers in my life. One was actually a teacher, was a professor, Rob Cantor, here at the U of I, who just retired. We just birded together every once in a while. And there was this other teacher who, his name's Greg, he led the local Sunday morning bird walks, and there was this thing that they could both do, which was, you know, I would be out birding.

Brodie: 05:50

I might have my binoculars, and this is like my first year of birding. I'd have my binoculars, my used binoculars, my cheap used pair of binoculars that I had, and my little bird guide, and I would go out and I'd like, try to bird, and I would like, you know, would have like five. Right? Would have a list of like five birds that are definitely here in my head, and then one of these two people would show up at the exact same place, the exact same time, and they would just get out of their car, and that, like, they wouldn't even have their binoculars on yet. No binoculars, not much less like looking around and searching, and they would instantly have like 15.

Brodie: 06:26

You know, they'd be like, oh, there there's this, and there's this, and you can hear the great crested flycatcher over here, and oh my gosh, there's a scarlet tanager. And I I just I I was so Frankly, I was like, at first, was disbelieving. Right? I just couldn't believe that this that they were possibly telling the truth. Like, they had to be lying.

Abigail: 06:45

You're like, Okay. Uh-huh. Like, oh yeah, like

Brodie: 06:49

Right. Yeah. I was like, these these people are clearly, they're just showing off, and like, they're wrong. Right? Like, they're lying.

Brodie: 06:55

But they weren't. Right? Like, inevitably, what would happen is that slowly, I would find each of these eight or nine additional species that they had heard with sight. Like, would finally see the Scarlet Tangier. I would finally see the other bird, right?

Brodie: 07:13

And I was real, I just really coveted that ability. I really wanted to be able to do that. It was like, it was like they could read something that I couldn't read. It was like a language that they could hear that I couldn't hear, and I I desperately, I coveted that so bad, and that's probably what got me really invested into it. So yeah, I would love to say it's the, it was the beauty, and the the the majestic, wonderful sounds, but no, it was because I wanted I thought that was cool, and I wanted to be able to do it too.

Brodie: 07:39

I have since very much invested into the majesty though, so it's not all it's not all lost.

Abigail: 07:45

Well, I think that's a really common feature of a lot of naturalists, though, is like, this kind of collectors of information, almost. It's like, you go out and there's somebody at that site who can point to any plant and knows what it is. And you're like, I wanna be able to do that. Right? Like, how do I get to do that?

Abigail: 08:03

So this, like, idea of we're just collectors of knowledge. Like, we wanna know this kind of thing and have all of that and and be able to do this really cool skill because we wanna know. And so, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Brodie: 08:17

Yeah. I mean, think there's tons and tons of naturalists love sharing nature with other people. And so that being able to listen to things and and be able to share those noises with people, think that's definitely a thing. So coveting it, that's okay then. I'm convinced that coveting is not like a, I don't know, a sinful desire, whatever.

Abigail: 08:39

The intent to share it, right? And that's what a lot of naturalists are doing too. They just wanna share it and give it out to the world, and which is just really awesome. Or do good things with that information, like restoration or community science, things like that, so

Brodie: 08:51

Absolutely.

Darci: 08:53

So if someone is not familiar with the sounds of wildlife and wants to start learning these skills and sharing this knowledge, you have any ideas or recommendations on what would be the most iconic and most easily to recognize around Illinois?

Brodie: 09:10

Yeah. So specific to Illinois, I I had to think about this for a little bit. So, there there are tons of, like, really recognizable sounds in Illinois. I would argue that that probably 90% of the birds that we have in Illinois maybe not 90, like 85, right? 80 to 85% of the birds

Abigail: 09:26

Okay, Brodie, being super specific here.

Brodie: 09:30

But I mean, but seriously, like, they're really easy to recognize, and once you learn them, like, it's Like, they're really hard until that moment that you have learned it, and then it's like, Oh, how did I ever get this wrong? Right? Like, how did I not know this? I would say, like, the really unique to Illinois, because we don't have very many endemic species. I think we only have one.

Brodie: 09:51

Right? It's like, Kankakee Mallow is I think our only endemic species. Sure. Anyway, that's like, So something that is unique to Illinois, though, is like, we are, as it turns out, kind of at the center of like the periodical cicadas, so the thirteen and seventeen year cicadas. So we have all of these different broods.

Brodie: 10:13

We're on average, we are hearing periodical cicadas more often than most other states, and I think four different species, then they sound different. They all have different sounds. Right? So that's probably one thing that is actually is pretty unique to Illinois. Of course, can hear like those individuals in other states, but like, it's unlikely you're gonna hear, for instance, all four, like we did last year during the the double emergence.

Brodie: 10:37

Another thing that I think is unique is also sort of at the biome level, which is that we have these beautiful prairies. We have this prairie biome and the wet prairie. I know these are not individual animals. This is a community of animals. It is a iconic sound to Illinois, because of course we are the Prairie State.

Brodie: 10:55

And I struggle to put into words how beautiful a, like a prairie in the morning, or a wet prairie sort of in the evening. Oh my gosh. But it's such a wonderful, beautiful sound. It is something you can hear in other states, but it's going to be a different community of birds, insects, and amphibians. It's only here that you're gonna hear our community of birds, insects, and amphibians.

Abigail: 11:18

Yeah. I second that. Even in, you know, I'm up in Cook County, Chicago Suburbs area, and it's hard to go somewhere that isn't like got the noise pollution of like traffic in some way shape or form, but even with that, I remember I was at Indian Boundary Prairie in Markham, Illinois, and it's kind of like, it's surrounded by all these highways, and I just remember being like, woah, like it felt alive, and all these different just like sounds to it, and you could distantly hear the traffic in the background, which I think is a really important part of the human soundscape that we have now these days. But I was just surprised at how serene, but also noisy it was, and I say that with air quotes, right? Like, in the sense that noisy usually means a bad thing, but noisy to me felt, it just felt like there was a lot going on there.

Brodie: 12:08

Yeah, buzzing with life.

Abigail: 12:10

Oh, there we go. Yeah. Well, so I was in the woods a couple of weeks ago, and I heard this sound, and I'm thinking about, like, always hear sounds and I'm like, oh, that's a bird, but then I'm always surprised when it's not a bird because I'm not as familiar with animal sounds, and we found out it was actually like a baby raccoon, which call me silly all you want of being like, how could you confuse a raccoon with a bird? But it's fine. I think there's there's options to look to get confuse them.

Abigail: 12:41

So that kind of leads me to thinking about like, are there any sounds or, like, species in Illinois that you might be surprised are, like, really vocal, or just, like, a surprising sound that that species makes?

Brodie: 12:54

Oh, yeah. So, actually, the the thing you mentioned, the baby raccoons, yeah, they they have some very interesting sounds that they make. I mean, even adult raccoons make some really interesting sounds. But baby animals in general are surprisingly vocal. Of course, we we know for the most part what, little baby birds sound like.

Brodie: 13:11

Many of them are making the same, very similar begging sound. Right? I would say one that has fooled me several times has been mallard and wood duck chicks. They they have this little tiny call that they make, and it's it doesn't sound like the rest of the birds, the way that they do their sort of begging sound. And it's very bizarre, it's very strange, and it's one that I would say that folks should know, just because it's so strange, and it will catch you off guard, and spiel like, what is that?

Brodie: 13:39

I don't know. Another one is actually the chipmunk. So, if you become really well known amongst your friends for knowing animal sounds, it's just wild sounds of wildlife, like you can just, you can ID them pretty easy, they'll just start sending you little video clips or audio clips of things that they don't know. Right? Like, so Abigail, maybe you you would have sent me some, you know,

Brodie: 14:02

Brodie, what is this? Right? This happens to me, of course, fairly regularly. Most often, it's like a random insect, and I have to be like, well, I honestly, I don't know. I'll have to look it up.

Brodie: 14:13

Just a second. A lot of times, it's a brown thrasher, because the brown thrasher, it's a mimic, so it makes lots of little different calls, sort of all given the similar voice, but they're really loud, so people will encounter them. But the the one I've gotten the most often is actually the chipmunk. They make this sort of hollow, wood tapping noise, that's it's really sweet and really lovely, but if you don't know what it is, you'll never, yeah, you will never guess what it is. It it just it sounds very bizarre and strange, And so, that is just, yeah, that's just one that I think people would be surprised about.

Brodie: 14:46

And I know they'll be surprised about because people are surprised when I tell them, Oh, that's a chipmunk. You have a chipmunk in your backyard. Oh, wait. Actually, I remembered one more, which is the American toad. But they have this really musical trill, a sort of high pitched musical trill that doesn't match their gruff demeanor.

Brodie: 15:02

The warty skin, the dry warty skin, the the sort of frowny face they have. You would never guess that they have this beautiful song that they sing. So yeah, those are those are my surprising those are my surprising insects.

Abigail: 15:14

I love that. I feel like chipmunks are one of those things that are like, if you have a lot of chipmunks, like, you're like, oh my gosh, yeah, chipmunks. But I feel like for most people, they are like a little surprising, and kind of like a wildlife wonder a little bit in their space, in their backyard. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just like, oh, a chipmunk, like, but yeah, they do make a really interesting sound.

Abigail: 15:35

I also think about like, I think people are surprised when they hear, like, something in the woods, and it's actually like a squirrel. Like that like sound. I'm like, no, that's not a bird. Like, that's a squirrel. And everyone's like, what?

Abigail: 15:46

Like, what? Squirrels? So just kind of these interesting sounds that you're like,

Brodie: 15:51

That was a great impression.

Abigail: 15:53

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Brodie: 15:54

And I agree, the squirrel, that's another one. You know, people just, what is that? Yep, it's a squirrel. It's angry because there's a hawk nearby.

Abigail: 16:04

Oh yeah, if you look, if you see it making that noise, it's like, tail is like, flipping. Like, it's like, yeah, we're all doing a visual that nobody can see in this audio medium, but there's like a little flipping, maybe we'll include a little clip if we can in the show notes for people. Yeah.

Darci: 16:22

So learning about wildlife sounds, like, it's fun. People enjoy it as a hobby, it can be a skill, but why else should people learn about sounds of wildlife?

Brodie: 16:31

Yeah, that's a good question. Why should you learn about wildlife? So in my opinion, everyone should do it because it's cool. But the thing that to actually convince people is that, you know, there's this thing that I like to say, which is that if you learn to listen for wildlife, you'll hear it everywhere. And the thing is is that if you learn these wildlife sounds, it unlocks this huge world of biodiversity.

Brodie: 16:55

We recently went on a tour of a woodland, a little urban woodland. And because I knew I was gonna come to this podcast, I deliberately kept two bird lists. One was the list of birds that I saw with my eyes, or that we saw with our eyes. Amy Lefinghouse, she color A couple other folks saw a few birds. Oh, there's only six birds that we saw with our eyes.

Brodie: 17:19

Red tailed hawk was one that was swirling overhead. I saw a house finch when we were walking in. I think we had American robin, and, you know, just a few other things, few other miscellaneous things. But I also kept the second list, which was the birds that I couldn't see, but that I could hear, including those birds that I could hear that were not visually apparent. Right?

Brodie: 17:41

They they were hidden, literally hidden from us, because they were behind, you know, late May, they were hidden behind the foliage. Right? It more than doubled our list. It made the number of species that we could appreciate way, way higher. And so, like, we were going back and forth, and I was pointing out, oh, this this bird is calling, and this bird is calling.

Brodie: 18:01

And all of those would have been lost to us if we had not, you know, some of us, you know, me and and other folks, had not had our ears out listening for it. And this is not just true for birds. It's true for, of course, mammals, as we've been talking about, but it's also true for insects. So late May is, of course, a little early for the insects. We didn't hear many of those.

Brodie: 18:24

But, you know, you go out in July, in August, and you're out in the wild, you're gonna hear a lot of birds, you're gonna hear a ton of insects. And our brain sort of filters those things out. If you don't know to listen for it, it's like you learn a new word, and you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. That's a phenomenon with a name. I don't remember what the name is.

Brodie: 18:47

But it happens with sounds, too. It's not that the sound is suddenly happening again, or the word is being used more often. It's just that you learned it and your brain is starting to pick up on it. You'll be walking around like, that's an indigo bunting. Oh, that's a common true Katydid

Brodie: 19:01

Right? There's this huge world of biodiversity that you can't see with your eyes. They're hidden. Sometimes they're camouflaged, sometimes they're just obscured by leaves, whatever. Maybe they're hiding under a rock pile, or, you know, in a brush pile.

Brodie: 19:14

But you can't see them, and so you have to be listening. So that's my big pitch, is that if you want to be surrounded by wildlife, if you want to have wildlife in your life no matter where you are, no matter what time of the year it is, learn sounds. They're everywhere. There's a whole orchestra playing.

Abigail: 19:33

I was gonna add too. We've talked about phenology and phenological observations a lot in throughout this this podcast, throughout many seasons. And this idea of like, we usually just document what we see or what we've observed with our eyes. Documenting what we hear as well is so valuable because maybe the species only makes this sound at this time too. Right?

Abigail: 19:57

Like that's its breeding season. And so like having that documented as well, it's it's all part of the sensory and understanding of how the world works and how our natural world kind of operates and interacts with each other, and so it enriches that experience even deeper.

Brodie: 20:14

Oh, I agree 100%. I mean, I I have days up marked on my calendar when I am like, I should be listening for This Frog at this time, you know?

Abigail: 20:22

Yeah. Like, I mean, and you think about it from a natural sense of, like, just people who are more familiar with the visuals, like, I know when the the lightning bugs come out, or the fireflies, depending on where you are from the Midwest, I think about too, like, the dog day cicadas come out. Right? Like, the annual cicadas. Like and you think about, like, the memories that are kind of associated with those sounds too, and it just kind of, like, just I don't know.

Abigail: 20:45

It just makes everything a little more richer. You're like, oh, yeah. Like, think about that context, guess, is, like, what nature sounds do you connect to your own like personal history and like feel personally connected to because there's so much probably there that like just takes you back. Right?

Darci: 21:00

I mean, it has a lot to like the appreciation of like nature conservation that, like, we want to honor the wildlife that's around us. And so how can we actually facilitate that into our daily lives of caring for our backyards, caring for nature spaces, and making sure that these animals and insects continue to have this habitat to thrive. And so just learning to identify it makes that appreciation so much easier to live out within your daily mindset of of conservation efforts.

Brodie: 21:29

Yeah. If you don't know, it's hard to care about. Right? It's hard to care about something that you don't even know exists. I totally agree with you, Abigail, about, you know, these these sounds sort of being part of our core memories, you know, that they really enrich our lives.

Brodie: 21:42

Sharing the sounds with people is like one of I obviously, I love doing it. I have a whole podcast about it, right? When I'm out and about and hanging out with my friends, I'll do my best to slip little identifications just into our conversation, just to try to embed it in their life too, because I think this really enriches people's lives just tremendously. Because we, like you said, we have all these memories. We have all these things that we're doing it like, in the summer, right, when all these things are calling.

Brodie: 22:12

We have all this cast of background characters that are all out there with us. Most people don't know. And so you could be like, you know, stop, stop. Like, hey, everyone, can you hear that? Can you hear that?

Brodie: 22:22

Everyone will stop, you know, they'll put down their drink or their food or whatever, and you're like, yeah, what about it? You're like, Oh, that is my favorite bird. That is the common nighthawk. Which is, of course, it's often singing in above urban areas. So like, if you go out at night, you know, in the evening to go hang out with your friends, you're eating outside on the patio or whatever, there's gonna be nighthawks above you, and swifts as well.

Brodie: 22:45

Chimney swifts. And folks don't know that they're up there, right? But when they finally know and understand and can identify that thing, it changes something. It changes I don't know what it is, but it changes something.

Abigail: 22:57

Yeah. I love that a lot of the examples you're bringing up too are things that a lot of people can interact with. Right? Like, you think you have to go to this natural space to interact with wildlife sounds and hear them, but they're really around us as always, which, like, goes with that appreciation that Darci was talking about. It's like, it's not just going and searching for wildlife sounds.

Abigail: 23:18

It's these it's these ambient noises, or ambient noises, I don't know how to say that word, but one of those.

Brodie: 23:24

Yeah, they're in our backyards.

Abigail: 23:27

Is there any species that, when we're thinking about identification, you know, like, know them by their sound, but is there some that, like, you can only identify them by their sound?

Brodie: 23:39

Yeah, that's one of the other great reasons to learn wildlife sounds, is that a couple of animals, a couple groups of animals, are very hard to identify without using sound. One of them are the empidonax flycatchers, the empids for short. And this is a little group of birds. So there's 10 of them, but I think there's only five that we see regularly in Illinois. The yellow bellied flycatcher, Acadian flycatcher, alder flycatcher, willow flycatcher, and least flycatcher.

Brodie: 24:09

And these all look identical. Right? They all have sort of dark, blackish, grayish wings with wing bars, and they have eye rings, and they sort of have palish fronts and and grayish backs. They all look identical. An ornithologist could probably tell them apart if they had them in their hand.

Brodie: 24:27

Right? So they're not so identical that they can't be 100% be identified visually. But the variation between individuals and one species is such that like, they overlap, so it just gets really hard. Right? Luckily, they sound totally different from each other.

Brodie: 24:44

So there's a shortcut, at least in the spring when they're, you know, constantly calling, more or less constantly calling. And they all just sound really different, and really fun, honestly. Least flycatcher is Chiback. Chiback. Chiback.

Brodie: 24:57

The Acadian flycatcher sounds sort of like this explosive squeaky toy, almost. Some say it's like pizza. A pizza? But it it's They're easy to tell apart using sound, essentially. I mean, that's That is a great reason to learn those birds, is because it will actually help you ID them in the field.

Brodie: 25:17

There are some other groups of animals. I would say like the day singing cicadas. A lot of them look almost identical. But that's kind of cheating almost, because like most insects, camouflaged, or way up in a tree, or in some way out of your reach, and hard to identify visually without catching them. So that that's a little bit cheating, but like, it is true that many of the day singing cicadas look very, very, very similar.

Brodie: 25:43

But they sound different, is the key. Yeah.

Abigail: 25:45

Yeah. Well, that kind of goes into too, like, again, that question of like, why making sounds like And maybe it's not why they make sound, but that oftentimes too is like a speciation tactic, evolutionarily, is like this idea of they make different sounds that aren't compatible for mating. Right? Like one animal doesn't recognize this as a mating sound, so it won't mate with this particular species. And so that's like very common in frogs speciation.

Abigail: 26:12

Like technically, they could mix, but they don't because they don't breed at the same time or they make different sounds. And so that seems to be the case for these flycatchers is like they make these really different sounds that like kind of show you like that keeps the species a species as opposed to like a general mixing of groupings, so which is cool.

Brodie: 26:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that we mentioned periodical cicadas before. I think they found, like, a subspecies or something that is speciating by way of, like I think they have their call overlaps with the call of another, and so, like, they're slowly moving of their frequency away. And so, like, we can see speciation happening in real time. Like, this thing that you're talking about is, they don't wanna want to intervene.

Brodie: 26:56

Wanna, like, reinforce their species, so, like, they're slowly moving away in this frequency range. It's very interesting.

Abigail: 27:02

Periodic cicadas are so cool. Definitely check out our archives when we talked to, I think, we talked to Kacey Athey about that, like, a few years back. Or last year, I guess, when the periodical cicadas were out. Now people are gonna forget about them for twelve or thirteen or seventeen years or something, and I'm gonna be like, no. Don't forget.

Abigail: 27:20

They're still here. You still see evidence today. But

Darci: 27:24

You've touched on this a little bit. Sound is a great way to reach new people. Do you wanna dive a little bit more into why that is?

Brodie: 27:31

Oh, yeah. So this this is not like a scientific thing. This is like a personal experience thing for the most part. But in my experience doing outreach, sound is just really useful, for two predominating reasons. So one is that it bypasses a lot of problems that we often run into with certain groups of animals.

Brodie: 27:52

So things like frogs and toads. People don't wanna touch frogs and toads. Right? Like, on average, people don't like them. Same thing with insects, actually, especially insects.

Brodie: 28:02

People just, they get the ick. Like, they, yucky. I don't even wanna think about it. I don't wanna look at it. Like, get it away from me.

Brodie: 28:09

But the thing is, is that if you're showing them the sound, right, usually you're like in the ecosystem. Right? Like, the animal is merely in proximity. Right? You can't even see it.

Brodie: 28:19

And often, these sounds are actually quite beautiful. Like I said, the the toad has this really pleasant sort of trill that it does. And so, like, you can bypass this whole quote unquote gross reaction that people have by just using the sound instead. You know, I've talked to people about insects who would never ever want to hold an insect, or really probably even want to learn about an insect. But they are interested in knowing what the sound is outside of their house.

Brodie: 28:47

I think that sound is sort of underrated as an outreach tool because of that. It can just bypass some of these traditional problems that we have. I guess another problem that it bypasses is sometimes mobility, because you don't have to like, you know, go traipse through the mud in order to go look at this thing. You can you can, like I mean, like I said, you can just get out of your car and identify like five or six species. So it can bypass some other little things, like this mobility problem, just by merit of sound propagating through space. I'll add more onto just what we were talking about before, is just like the enrichment of people's lives. Most animals that sing are doing so in the warm months. These are the same months that we're having our cookouts, our bonfires, house parties, meeting our friends, like I said, out at restaurants, eating out on the patio. And there's just this beautiful cast of background characters at each and every one of those events.

Brodie: 29:44

And they've been out there for their whole lives, these You know, everyone's whole life. They've been there for millions of years, the insects. They've always been the anthem of every summer. Right? They're out there.

Brodie: 29:55

And it's just this beautiful cast of characters that you can that you can get to know. And getting an introduction to these animals can be a real delight for folks. And at the very least, it's a really great conversation starter that you can have with your friends.

Abigail: 30:09

Yeah. You can be the animal sound person, like Brodie.

Brodie: 30:12

Yeah. Absolutely.

Abigail: 30:13

Everyone's every friend's gotta have a role in their group, honestly. I get plant pictures all the time.

Brodie: 30:19

Yeah. You got this. We got to bring something to the table. Right?

Abigail: 30:22

Yeah. Yeah. What do you bring to the table? If you don't know what it is be the sound person. I love that.

Abigail: 30:30

Is there so I'm like bought in. Right? I wanna know. I wanna learn more sounds. Where should I start?

Abigail: 30:36

Right? Like, what's, you know, what's something like a beginner should know?

Brodie: 30:41

So what is something that a beginner should know? The chipmunk, for sure. Know that one, because you'll get questions about it. The minids, so the catbird, the grey catbird, brown thrasher, and the northern mockingbird. Northern mockingbird, particularly if you're in the southern part of the state.

Brodie: 30:56

There's not too many of those in the northern part, but they they show up every once in a while. This is another bird that sort of lots of folks ask questions about because they're they they steal calls from the world around them, so they consistent thing that they do. They have a format. Right? So the catbird will often say things, I think it's phrases of three.

Brodie: 31:18

So we'll steal a call, but that call is repeated three times. I think for the brown thrasher, it's two. It might be flipped. You'll have to listen to the Voice of the Wild episodes on these, because I believe I say that. But the common nighthawk is another one, because it's It is out and about during our everyday lives.

Brodie: 31:33

The chimney swift is a great bird to start with. For insects, common true katydid, and the greater angle wing. Those are just very, very common. You can find them nearly everywhere, during the time that they're out. So, you know, starting in like July.

Brodie: 31:47

Those are some really great animals to start with. But after that, I would say, you know, move on to the common birds. You have the blue your blue jays, your northern cardinals, your house finch. Just learn those, that really common cast of characters, so that you can, later on, in your sort of birding career, you can filter them out and start learning those other things that are coming out. The more rare birds, the the warblers, and, you know, some of the shorebirds make unique sounds that you can learn.

Brodie: 32:17

You have to be able to to to pick them out of the the mass of sounds in the morning chorus. So it's important to learn those those common birds too.

Abigail: 32:26

Yeah. I definitely I feel like so I like to say that Brodie, you are classified as a birder with a capital B. I wouldn't even classify myself as a lowercase b birder. I'm more like, I just don't get birds. Birds don't get me.

Abigail: 32:39

It's okay. But I also I feel like too, like, just even recognizing if you're like, I don't wanna dive as far as Brodie. That seems like a lot. I wanna just kind of like know a little bit. Like, just getting to know those common birds, like, in the morning is just like, I don't know, you sit and you drink your tea on the deck or whatever, you're sitting out, you're walking to work, whatever you're doing, and it's just, like, nice to kind of know, and then you kinda get to chat with them back, you know, cheerio, cheerio.

Abigail: 33:07

And then, again, then you kind of, like, if you hear one that you don't recognize, you get a little bit like, oh, oh, like, we have a northern flicker that's, like, made a home in one of our kind of, like, dying maple trees, and it's just like I just, like, love every time I hear it, I'm like, what's up, bud? How's it going? Like and so it's just kind of nice to have those kind of just like general recognition of of just the world around you, even if you don't wanna dive in too deep. Right?

Brodie: 33:31

Yeah. It's it's lovely to have a name for your neighbors.

Abigail: 33:34

Oh, I love that.

Darci: 33:36

Is there a better season compared to another to start learning, or just kinda jump into it?

Brodie: 33:42

Yeah, the best time to start learning is always right now. I would say that, as an addendum to that, that spring can be hard, if you're learning birds specifically, cause it, there's so much happening all at once. I wouldn't say don't learn your birds starting in the spring, but like, I would say that like, if you can, start learning them before then, so that you're a little more prepared. But, you know, fall is actually a pretty good time to start learning, whether you're trying to learn birds or insects, it's a pretty good time to start learning. Really, if only because it gives you like a taste.

Brodie: 34:15

You can get like a taste of all the things that are out there, and then you can spend the winter studying. And like, if you're really getting into it, you're like, you've gotten this taste, you're like, oh, I really wanna do this, you can, you know, start looking at books, and get some audio recordings, and start, you know, learning all of these species, so that in the spring and summer, you can really start putting that knowledge to use.

Abigail: 34:36

So I am in, like, the Mississippi Flyway. Right? So, like, thinking about two, it's kind of cool to understand the context of the birds that you might be hearing. Right? So doesn't it you won't always hear a certain bird all the time because it's got it's migrating.

Abigail: 34:51

Or maybe there is a bird that you're hearing all the time, and now, just based on its sound and the fact that you hear it all year round, you've learned a little bit about that behavior, which is really, really cool to think about.

Brodie: 35:02

Oh, yeah. I agree.

Darci: 35:04

During my undergrad, we did a bird monitoring project, and so we did go out three different times during the day. And so even throughout the day to see those different birds come in and out, what their transportation is from one side of the forest to the other, was neat to see too.

Brodie: 35:19

Yeah. That that daily, the changeover that happens is so interesting. There's a moment in summer evenings when the katydids take over. Right? Like, it's like this shift exchange from second to third shift.

Brodie: 35:32

All the day singing cicadas, it's like within fifteen seconds. Like, it's a really short period of time, at least out where I I'm living. And the katydids suddenly start taking over. So like, you'll be firmly in day mode. Right?

Brodie: 35:44

Day mode, the cicadas are all screaming, it's wonderful, it's hot, and then suddenly, it's no longer cicada time, it's katydid time, you know? And the birds follow a similar thing. It's not quite so crisp, of course. But, you know, there's the morning chorus, and throughout the entire day, there will be the indigo buntings that are singing near constantly. The same with the red eyed virios.

Brodie: 36:04

They're they're constantly singing. And then as the evening progresses, you get the common nighthawk and the swifts. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I love that daily progression.

Abigail: 36:15

And now I'm like wondering too if like, we have any any interested out there who are willing to document like what time that is every day that those like shifts kind of happen, and then to see how that occurs over the season, right, in the summer and, like, when those shifts happen. Where's the sun at when that happens and what time you know, like, when was sunset that day and, like, all of those different aspects that just kinda show those really cool interactions, and I'm sure maybe that exists somewhere. But I think that'd be really cool to find out because I just am like like and that's like your own science that you're like discovering and and learning about the world. And so a lot of our listeners are bought in. Right?

Abigail: 36:52

They're they're passionate. We're passionate. And so we wanna do a little bit more than just, like, listen and appreciate. We wanna also, like, do something to contribute to conservation, community science, things like that. Is there any ways that, like, listening to wildlife can help with those efforts as well?

Brodie: 37:08

Yeah. Of course, there is. So we have iNaturalist. You can submit recordings, of course. This is sort of very low hanging fruit here.

Brodie: 37:16

Know, if you're just on iNaturalist, you can submit recordings of animals and just ID them that way. You can also ID animals on, that other people have recorded on iNaturalist. I think more a more structured way that you can contribute in community science would be something like, is it Abigail, you'll have to correct me here. The Chicagoland frog survey? Is that what it's called?

Abigail: 37:38

Are you talking about the one through Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum?

Brodie: 37:41

I think so.

Abigail: 37:42

Like the Yeah. Yeah, they do like a frog survey monitoring. So you do like a training in the winter, like by February, March, like, frogs are coming out. That one's a really good one that I like.

Brodie: 37:55

And that's not the only one. There are plenty of frog surveys out there. You can probably get in, be a part of those by contacting your local park district. A lot of those surveys are run out of local parks. The other way would be a this Frog Watch is another frog amphibian based community science where you have to know the sounds.

Brodie: 38:16

Another one is the Breeding Bird Survey for, I believe this is run through INHS. You know, they say that the Christmas Bird Count is for the birders. Right? Like, because all the birders get together and it's winter, and we all go out and go count all the birds. But the Breeding Bird Survey is for the birds.

Brodie: 38:35

Right? It's it is actually for their health, because we need to know where these birds are breeding and how to know how well they're doing, essentially. The thing about breeding bird surveys is that they're really heavily, really, really heavily reliant on sound. Because of course, there there's so much that is leafed out in the middle of the summer, that you just you can't you can't really do it very well unless you know all your bird sounds pretty well. So if you if you get pretty good at understanding your bird calls, you participate in a see if you can find a breeding bird survey that you can participate in.

Abigail: 39:10

Or see if you can go with a friend who does know their bird calls and go with them. That's my thing, is like, I feel like the best way to learn is just to hang out with people who do those things too, right, and who are doing it to be like, I'm just gonna go under Brodie's little bird wing and learn all his sounds, and like hang out with him and have, like, you know, just like you did, how you had, you know, these mentors who were able to identify these things and kind of bounce ideas off of. That's really helpful too, to have that kind of community.

Brodie: 39:39

I honestly, I would add an addendum to that, which it doesn't even have to be an expert that you go with. Just somebody else who's interested in it. Because if you have someone else to bounce ideas off of, you suddenly get way better at birding by ear. Because you're like, was that x y z? There's like a dynamic that can develop there, where they're gonna be like, okay, of that list of three, it's probably number two.

Brodie: 39:59

Right? And then you can like just go back and forth that way. I mean, I remember doing this with birding friends. Right? Because I wasn't around Rob and Greg all the time.

Brodie: 40:07

It was, you know, a lot of the learning happened when I was just birding out with my, you know, with my buddies, my other buddies.

Darci: 40:15

So we have iNaturalist, we have Voice of the Wild. What other tools would you recommend to learn wildlife sounds?

Brodie: 40:23

Okay, yes. So some other things that you can try. One is Merlin, which is Cornell's bird app, bird ID app. It has a Sound ID feature, which is, honestly, it's really good. It's very good at what it does.

Brodie: 40:37

But the thing is that it's not perfect. So, for those who don't know, you can open up the app, you click Sound ID, and then you can sort of just wait, and it'll listen. It'll use your microphone and listen to the world, and it will listen for, bird sounds. And if it hears a bird sound, it will it will pop up with the species. The thing about it is it's not 100% accurate.

Brodie: 40:58

There's sort of two things that it does. One, it's just not very good at picking up sounds that are far away. Even if they're loud sounds, it has trouble with that. And two, the thing that it has a problem with is just telling you that something exists that doesn't exist. So, constantly, I will open Merlin bird sound ID.

Brodie: 41:16

So it'll be like something weird that I don't, like, what is that? I don't Maybe I don't remember, or honestly, more often, it's just sort of a slightly strange call, it doesn't quite fit the puzzle piece that I have in my head. And I'll play it, and it'll tell me, like, so many times. There's a northern mocking bird right here. And I I'm like, there's no there's never a northern mocking bird, basically.

Brodie: 41:36

Right? And so it has these issues. It's a little more active than it than it should be, essentially. So essentially, what I'm saying is you it's a great tool, but don't necessarily report every bird that you see on Merlin as as having actually existed. Right?

Brodie: 41:52

Like, make sure you get a confident ID on it. Another thing that can be used, because of course, iNaturalist was already, we already talked about that. You can submit an observation to iNaturalist, and even if you don't know what it is, someone else might come in and and ID it. Usually you have to put a rough parameter on there, like you have to say like, it's probably an amphibian, probably a bird, or something like this, in order to get a quick ID. The thing that I would really recommend people do, and this is tricky, because all of the ones that I know of, these resources, are all CDs, right?

Brodie: 42:26

This ancient technology of CDs, which no one, I honestly, I'm gonna be totally honest, I bought one of these recently. I rebought them, I should say, because I lost my digital copy, and I had to buy a CD plug in adapter for my computer, because my computer doesn't play CDs anymore. Right? But there's some really great audio resources out there that'll walk you through these things. One of them is Guide to Night Singing Insects of the Northeast, by John Himmelman and Michael DiGiorio.

Brodie: 42:55

Birding by Ear East and Central by Richard K Walton and Robert Lawson. Then there's also More Birding by Ear by the same folks. Then Field Guide to Birdsongs. Field Guide to Eastern And Central North America by the Cornell Lab has, I think, almost 300 birds on it, and it's just they say the name, and then the bird call comes. Right?

Brodie: 43:18

And these are really invaluable, at least to me, to learning all of my bird calls. There's just, there's so many. Right? And you kind of need a dedicated resource, because it's hard to just go hear something and then put it into the computer, right? It's hard to go just show your Merlin app to every bird that you find.

Brodie: 43:36

It's hard to learn that way. You sort of need a backup resource. If folks can't come across a way to play a CD, which honestly, I don't blame anyone who can, there are some things you can do online. We list them in the blog post that'll go with this. Songsofinsects.com.

Brodie: 43:52

This is, oh gosh, Will Hershberger's website. Great resource for learning your insects. I think on Spotify, maybe also Apple Music has a birdsong ear training guide, Who Cooks for Sam Peabody? Learn to recognize the songs of birds from the Midwest to the Northeast States by John Fife Thief. That's pretty good.

Brodie: 44:17

It uses mnemonics. So like, Who Cooks for Sam Peabody is I believe the one for the barred owl that he uses, but it's like all these mnemonic devices in order to learn the bird's sound. I don't That doesn't necessarily mesh with me, but it does mesh with a lot of folks, so that's pretty good. There's a federal amphibian call database that I link at the blog post. Frogsurvey.org, so the Chicago Frog Survey folks, they have a a amphibian resource that you can use to learn some of those calls.

Brodie: 44:46

You can also look things up on McAuley Library, so Cornell's McAuley Library. They have not all species, but many, many species that make sounds they'll have dedicated recordings for. And if you, you're, if you know the species that you want to know, you can look up Cornell's other resource, which is all about birds. And they, each bird profile has a sound tab, and you can go into that sound tab and learn all of the different sort of little tiny strange calls and regional variations for essentially any bird species in North America.

Abigail: 45:18

Love all about birds. It got me through the birds class that I ultimately ended up dropping in college, so they made me not as the best. See, not even lowercase b, but, you know, respect. So

Abigail: 45:31

Well, Brodie, thank you so much for sharing all of your just your wealth of knowledge on wildlife sounds and how to get involved and all the different pieces that go with it. We are going to finish today's episode with everyday observations where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting.

Abigail: 45:54

So Darci, you get to go first.

Darci: 45:57

Great. Yesterday, actually, I was out doing some river watch monitoring with some volunteers and we had a great time. It was so fun just to be outside, nice weather and we got some good samples. So it's fun to see all the different macroinvertebrates again. And then we're putting our samples back into the into the creek and we found a molt of a crayfish and so they're like, we weren't sure if it was the molt or the actual crayfish and so they went over and got it like, oh, it's just the skin, we're good.

Darci: 46:26

So we gotta pick it up. I didn't realize how many times crayfish can molt in their life and so depending on the species, but like they molt like eight to ten times in their juvenile stage. And so, that was just a fun highlight of the day to to go out and find a little crayfish shedding.

Brodie: 46:43

That's very cool.

Abigail: 46:46

Yeah. That is so fun. I love that. I again, like, all different evidence of animals that you see that, like, just tell you a little bit about their life. I think it's really cool.

Abigail: 46:53

And you get to be a little investigator, a little researcher. So, alright Brodie, what's your everyday observation?

Brodie: 47:01

Oh man, I've been spending so much time indoors lately, but one thing that I did do was a friend of mine was trimming some hedges trimming some hedges around there. Actually, was trimming a fence around the near the house. And they were We came across a sort of wild growing spice bush, just sort of growing up through the fence, and I was able to go and get get some cuttings, and I've never done this before, but I'm trying to root from cuttings. So this is a brand new experience to me, but I got to go out and, you know, smell the wonderful smell of that those spice bush leaves, and grab a couple of these and try to root them in a couple different methods that I'm trying. So I'm trying to do the submersion method, and then the other one where you get like sphagnum moss, and you wrap it around the stem after putting some breeding hormone on it.

Brodie: 47:50

I'll see which one turns out.

Abigail: 47:53

Yeah, give us a little update when you know. Spicebush is like one of my favorite plants. I just love it. I love I planted one, and I'm like, and the fact that you just said, oh, it's just like growing in a fence like a wild one, I was like, what? Can I have mine?

Abigail: 48:08

Like, because they just smell so good, and then they're host for like the the spicebush caterpillar, or butterfly, I'm not quite sure. But Brodie's like, Yeah, that.

Brodie: 48:20

Yeah, spice bush butterfly. Yeah. Wonderful shrub. Great shrub for pollinators. Great shrub just to have in your property, if for no other reason, honestly, my favorite thing about it is just that smell.

Brodie: 48:31

Grab a leaf, crunch it up a little bit. Oh my gosh, I love that smell so much.

Abigail: 48:36

Yeah. Fruit Loops. Smells like Fruit Loops, so

Brodie: 48:39

I'm gonna have to go smell those leaves again, because I never put together that it could smell like a Fruit Loops, but I'm gonna have to test that now.

Abigail: 48:47

What? That's like the thing. Maybe like, I'm just confusing sassafras, but like, always was like, yeah. I think they both smell like Fruit Loops. I'm just gonna say it, I think.

Abigail: 48:58

Well, there you go, everybody. Find a spice bush after this episode, after listening to it, see if you see it. Let us know. Email us. Does it smell like Froot Loops, and we'll let you know.

Brodie: 49:08

Yeah, I got very curious now. That's like the first thing I'm gonna do when I get home.

Abigail: 49:15

Alright, well, I will go, my everyday observation is I have ferns growing in my backyard. I did like a little fern garden, and my Christmas fern has spores on it now, and I was like, like, I have an everyday observation coming up, like, should go look more into this, and I, like, knew that this fern life cycle was a little different. Not like a little different, like very different, right? Because it has the sporophyte, which is like the bit the phase that you see as a fern, right? Like, it's your when you think of ferns and their fronds and things like that, that's the sporophyte phase.

Abigail: 49:49

And then the gametophyte phase, which is, like, the little, like, babies that come out and where like, how they reproduce and why they like to live near water and how they're kind of, like, earlier in the evolutionary tree, like, they're they're an earlier land plant species, or like classification of animal or of plants. And so it's just like really cool to see that, and then to see it's actually right next to my magnolia tree, which is also like an early tree species. So to kinda have this, I don't know, like these different aspects of evolution, like existing in my garden next to the more advanced trees, advanced in quotations and plants and things like that. So just to kinda think about my garden in that context as well. So, Christmas ferns, it's got the little spores underneath, it's kind of like a red orange color right now, and it's really, really cool, so.

Brodie: 50:40

Yeah, Abigail out here with a Cretaceous garden.

Abigail: 50:43

Yeah. Yeah, right? It just I needed something to compete with the rose of sharon, and so that my neighbor has, so I put ostrich fern there, which surprisingly isn't doing well, but the Christmas and the interrupting fern? Doing great. So we're gonna let it happen.

Brodie: 51:01

Yeah, I mean, plant reproduction, you're talking about the life cycle for the it's just wild. Like, if you really want a headache, or alternatively, to be amazed by the complexity of nature, maybe that's a better way to put it. Yeah, look

Abigail: 51:14

at the was gonna say, I have very little time spent hating on birds this episode, okay? And now you're hating on my headache of production?

Brodie: 51:25

Yeah. It's a headache I'm totally willing to have. I love learning about that stuff. It is just very complex and very strange.

Abigail: 51:33

It is. It's it's just like different to think about, that, and also just like how they've just evolved over Like, when you think about different classifications of animals too, and like their different reproduction methods, and their different formats. Don't even get me into parasites, all the different pieces. So yeah, natural history right up there. Very cool.

Abigail: 51:54

Well, Brodie, thank you again so much for coming on the pod and just chatting with us. It's been a wonderful experience. We really appreciate it.

Brodie: 52:03

Thank you so much for having me, and I'm gonna plug my podcast right before we finish.

Abigail: 52:07

Please do. Please do all the plugs.

Brodie: 52:10

Yeah, so there's only one, if anyone is interested in learning more about Voice of the Wild and listening, you can go to go.illinois.edu/vow.

Abigail: 52:21

Yeah, great podcast, Really great. Just like those kind of like quick micro learnings, but that you can also listen to again. Right? So really, really wonderful. And Brody's doing some great work out there.

Abigail: 52:35

So thanks again.

Brodie: 52:37

Thank you.

Abigail: 52:38

This has been another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Alan Lawrence about wildlife and community science. This podcast is a University of Illinois Extension production hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, Amy Lefringhouse, Karla Griesbaum, and Darci Weber. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.