On this mini cast, we're in Cherryfield, Maine, chatting with Chris Riley, an avid birder.
Kyle:
Hi, I'm Kyle Lamont, the host of Concert Cast, a podcast about road tripping to America's best music venues. And Season one has been a sonic exploration of my home state of Maine. And one of the hardest things about producing each episode is the editing. So the solution, mini casts, bite sized morsels for your ears. Conversations that didn't make the full length piece on this mini cast. We're in Cherryfield, Maine, chatting with Chris Riley, an avid birder.
Maine's musical terrain is rich with natural noises, waves, wind and songs, bird songs.
My first word ever spoken was Bird. Really! I mean, my mom just told me that as I was writing this episode, sort of cool, right? But it's not like I grew up an avid birder or anything like that. But I definitely stop everything when I see a falcon or a hawk swoop from the trees. And it's quite fun to watch our resident bald eagle. I've named Bruiser Fish for dinner, but nothing makes me more happy than seeing a blue heron perched on the pier delighting in sunset or listening to loons call out for their loved ones.
Birds are everywhere, which means there are lots of birders, too. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated back in 2016 that there are 47 million birders and the more active away from home. Birders generated close to one hundred and seven billion dollars in travel and gear. I mean, that's coocoo, right?
While wandering the woods in Maine, our biggest music venue, if you will. I love hearing a bird sang. I admit I don't know who is singing or why, but it gives me great joy. And much like a band or a genre of music. Birds sound different. Everywhere you travel.
Riley:
I was just reading the other day that a cardinal down south actually sings. It's the same song, but it's it's like really different than one that's here.
They play like more jazzy down south. But up here, like in the Northeast, they play like more bluegrassy.
Kyle:
That's Chris Riley. He graduated from the University of Maine at Machias with a degree in avian ecology and conservation biology.
Riley:
Machias is like some of the best birding in the country. You know, between warblers and shorebirds. Ducks. Well, when I was in college, I did more of driving and birding than I probably did schoolwork. You know, I was like, I'd rather be out there driving around trying to find these birds. And when they come back in the spring, like you get like your Palm Warblers first and then your yellow Rom's and Magnolia Warblers, especially here, it's like deafening. I mean, if you're out at four o'clock in the morning waiting for sunrise on a hot, nice day in Washington County is crazy. Like most people have a hard time distinguishing how many birds are singing at one moment because it seems like one bird singing like a crazy song, but it's actually like 60 different birds singing once. You know, it is crazy around here. And it's partly because we have so many bugs. The mosquitoes and the black flies are ruthless, but that's what the Warblers eat.
Kyle:
He worked with the Fish and Wildlife for years as a bird researcher and now works as a full time mason.
Riley:
I used to talk about birds all the time, but I don't as much because I think my friends got annoyed with me. They’re like cool Riley another bird.
Kyle:
Describe that feeling you get when seeing a bird or hearing a bird.
Riley:
It's almost like the dog or your tail goes up. It's like my eyes focus right to where I think it is.
Kyle:
He lives off the grid on Sprague's Falls Road in Cherryfield, Maine, in a cabin that's powered by solar in the summertime. It's easy to spot his house from the road. Just look for rows of sunflowers that he grows and he in many ways is sort of like a sunflower. Tall, blond with a beaming smile. And Sprague's Falls Road, might I add, is a very cool community
Riley:
Not just like a community of people that you see once in a while, but our friends that we all get together like once a week and play game night. And there's like 20 of us now. I mean, there's so many of us who've moved to the road. So we're on a dead end street. A lot of dirty old hippies used to be. And now we've kind of taken it over.
Kyle:
What types of birds would you say people who live on Sprague's Falls Road are most like?
Riley:
We're kind of like Terns, you know, like they're communal birds. And I'm a community person, definitely. Like, as much as I like to think I'm a hermit, sometimes I still need my friends and my other, like, family. I guess common turns, Arctic turns and rosy turns nest on the outer islands here in like perty mine and I think has like three thousand breeding pairs and they all nest on like a teenager island. So they're all breeding in this tiny little area. And I'm not breeding, but I definitely like having all my similar friends close by.
Kyle:
I met Riley through Emma Thieme of Maven, who is his neighbor and was fascinated by how much he knew about birds. So my plan for the interview was to go birding alongside the Narraguagus River, which runs through town. But it was just too damn cold out. So instead we fire up his woodstove and watch chickadees eat from a huge bird feeder that stands outside his window.
Riley:
And there are the blackcap chickadees here. So they're like these tiny little fuzz balls because they always seem puffy. Or maybe they're just fat, but they're like black and white, you know, just black and white, too, because we do our boreal chickadees up in northern Maine. But they have like brown streaking on their size instead of all white on their belly.
Kyle:
What does a chickadee sound like?
Riley:
He's doing his cheeseburger.
Kyle:
Riley is referencing the phonetic transliterations, or pneumonic gingles that are used to identify birds and or describe their terp notes.
Riley:
For me, a lot of it is like I hear it and then I actually try and come up with the phonetic. I think that's how you say that, which is like the words that say like. So a chestnut warbler says please, please. Pleased to meet you. Please. Please. Pleased to meet you.
And like that just clicks in my head when I hear it. I'm like up chesnut side of warblers are back, you know, black throated green warblers as I am black and green or trees, trees, beautiful trees, which is a black throated green warbler and you hear tons of them here. So they like all, once you start hearing them, my brain just connects right to it now. But even every spring, I have to listen. I have all these old tapes that are on a mini disk, and every spring I listen to them because even if you're the best birder in the world, you still have to listen to the birding over, the birds songs.
Kyle:
So Bird Songs is your way of recognizing what type of bird it is?
Riley:
Yeah. Because once you hear that the different variation and notes and stuff, you know, because I was never in the music. I mean, I'm really into music, like listening to music. But I can never I never had any musical talent. So I feel like a person who does have musical talent would probably even a better birder because they could distinguish different notes, you know, which I've never learned that. But most of the good birders I know, none of them have musical talent. But that might just be cause we’re all nerds and we didn't. We weren’t the cool kid playing the guitar in college.
Kyle:
Birds have 12 different songs.
Riley:
There's alarm calls. There’s one just to tell you, your spouse like where you are or other birds where you are. And then there's like not fight, but like, get the heck out of here, you know, fight or flight. But, yeah, birds sing. They have a lot of different things, not just their song, but a lot of those chip notes. I never got very well. My ear just doesn't pick. I can hear him, but I can't distinguish between. Oh, that's a chestnut sided warbler, you know, unless it sings its actual song, which is all for breeding. You know, most birds are singing when they're breeding and they're setting up their territories and attracting a mate. You know, the males are singing. The best song they can so that the female, you know, wants to be with the male because he sings the best song or he sings that the best.
It's thought that some birds sing for fun, you know, like it's not necessarily always for I mean, not that we know that, but it is that the birds actually saying just for their own enjoyment. And it is like you said, like when you see a bird at the top of the tree and it's like beaks just going like this and you're like that little bird. It almost looks like their lip-syncing
Kyle:
What birds do people believe sing for fun?
Riley:
I think it's a wren. They make, like, crazy. It's like like a super loud, like a winter round, which we had a lot around here. They're like one of the smallest birds we have around here.But they were like one of the loudest song for a small little bird. Obnoxious sound, almost. And it's cool for like the first time you hear. But then it's like constantly in your ear. All right. Can that guy. Because, like, it's hard to tune him out when you're in the woods and there's a winter and sing and who's like way louder than all these other birds that are singing. You have to kind of tune out the winter. And now so you can hear the Tennessee Warbler or the Canada Warbler singing in the background because he's so loud. Birds have instead of a larynx, they have a syrinx. So there's like two airflow pieces that come up into the like our larynx. But they have to come up into their syrinx and they can actually, like, close off one side and sing out of one side alone. And then, like, breathe through the other side while still singing. So they can like can constantly sings some birds because they can take in air through the other side or they can sing two songs at the same time because there's one or two songs, but two sounds because of the right side. Will sing one thing and then the other side will be doing something else. It's kind of crazy that they like have developed that over the years. And birds are reptiles. Did you know that?
Kyle:
Would that help explain why waterbirds can withstand colder temperatures?
Riley:
My dad was just asking me that the other day on the phone is like, how can their little tiny legs not freeze? And I was like, part of it is, is their metabolism is so fast, their metabolisms is like I don't know how much faster than ours, but it's ridiculously fast. And that's how they stay warm and they poof up You see them like in the feeder, all puffed out. And that's because they're like radiating, trying to stay warm and creating insulation, like the airspaces in between, just like we do in the house.
Kyle:
Why does a loons call sound so different compared to birds who live in the woods?
Riley:
Well, loon or any bird that's on like a lake or something like that, that's like an open area has a way different song or call them like a bird in the trees. It's not as resonating. It's higher pitched for like a songbird, while like a loon has that deep resonating so that it can expand 200 meters, you know, which I think is like about the max of most birds sound or in the same thing with like a bird that like nest, like a babbling that nests in a field like something open like that.
They need even something else, like higher pitch resonating, even though like a loon's on the water. So it's like a deep resonation that spreads out.
It's all about how far you can spread your call in the habitat that you live in.
Kyle:
So what is your favorite birdsong?
Riley:
The bittern and which is like.
Mm hmm. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.
They like make it deep in there. It's again, it's like a loon there in like wetland areas. So they're resonating that sound. It sounds like if you like, had the microphone up to like a drop of water, like dropping into do. That's what the bittern sounds like. And they're like as big as a heron and they like blend in so well, like they stand there with their heads straight up with their big straight up. So they blend in with like the marsh reeds or whatever.
Kyle:
If you were putting a bird band together, Riley, what would your line up be?
Riley:
It would be the hermit thrush. He might be the guitarist probably he would keep it all together. Really hard to mimic. Sounds like you're in like a magical wonderland and someone's like hitting something with a wand. And then it would be the Bittern as my bassist. And then the Golden Crown King Lit, I think he'd be a backup singer.
And then it would be the Chestnut sided warbler, which is just one of my favorite in general. And that would be my singer I think.
Kyle:
And what would the name of your bird band be?
Riley:
Birdbrains!
And this spring we had Prairie Warblers down on Pigeon Hill Road. And someone said they heard them there. And I was like, no way. I was like, I don't believe it.
But then once you hear and see the bird at the same time, it's certain cause just hearing. Sometimes you like I know that's, you know, a chestnut side of warbler, but it's pretty rare. You get to see a lot of these little birds because you could be searching for hours. You can hear them singing and you know, they're there. But to find them is like,
oh yeah but the prairie warbler, so we went down there and we're way out of there on our way out, but one hundred miles north of their range. And there they were in this little scrub, all clear cut on the tops of the trees. It was like six of them. They were all just singing away at the tops of the trees.
Kyle:
Would you say that birding is cool because it allows you to get off the beaten path.
Riley:
Yeah, you get to go to places most people don't drive to.We used to go out into the mudflats and drive all the way through the mudflats to shorebird. You still can do it by Cookes cannery.
Yeah, you get to go to all these cool spots. You go down all these dirt roads that most people aren't like the Byrne Road Up and Topsfield, which is like famous around here for like Lauderback Woodpeckers and Black Back or Packers.
Kyle:
And I think we can all relate to that moment of connection when you're privy to an intimate concert in the woods.
Riley:
Yeah, especially when you're just watching the bird and you just don't stop. Especially if it's something rare, like we used to get Barrow's golden eyes and it’d be like zero degrees out and me and Barry would be like outside the car or they're spotting scopes just watching this bird for as long as we could before it flew away because you might never see another. You know.
Kyle:
According to Bob Duchesne, the vice president of Maine's Audubon chapter in Penobscot Valley and who developed the Maine birding trail. There are a few differences between being a birder and a bird watcher. A few are: If you have binoculars, you are a bird watcher. If you have binoculars that costs more than your monthly mortgage, you're a birder. If you notice birds while traveling, you're a bird watcher. If you traveled to see birds, you're a birder. If you drive to see a rare bird in Maine, you're a birder. He says that over time, even the most casual bird watcher gets better at identifying birds. But birders are continuously working to improve their skills. They go on walks, field trips and tours. They learn from experts. They read. They practice.
As we watch the chickens devour seeds, fly away, chirp and be merry. Out of nowhere, a blue jay and then a gold headed finch. Join and we go crazy for the moment. Riley is by definition, a true birder. But I, on the other hand, am a bird watcher. But one thing we have in common. Birds make us both sing for joy.
To hear full length episodes on Down East Maine’s live music scene. Subscribe to concert cast on your podcast App of Choice and type in ConcertCast.live to build your own music centric itinerary and to learn how you can be part of the show and find us on Spotify for to download a Maine music playlist. Mark Tekushan is our resident mastermind and Pete Mccgill is our editor and engineer. Special thanks to Chris Riley and to Pepper Little Amy, Charlie, Abbey Rock Jessiman, Corey Chandler, Emma Thieme, Eddie Contento, Jesse Couto. And thank you for listening.