Pomona Valley Audubon -
Chaparral Naturalist Archives

The Los Angeles Times of June 15, 1997 reported that a juror in the Timothy McVeigh Oklahoma bombing case, "suffers from diabetes as well as hearing loss. He attributes the latter to attending too many Grateful Dead concerts."

I suspected immediately that birds may also be suffering hearing loss from extremely loud noises in our neighborhoods, so I contacted members of the bird world to verify my concern.

Heretofore afraid of destroying our romantic image of their fantastic hearing abilities, my informants now admit that HEARING LOSS IS A PROBLEM. They agreed to go public when reminded of the detrimental long-term effects on their species.

"We have had to augment the warning calls of lookouts with a new body language. What your ornithologists thought were methods of preening are actually forms of warning to other birds," was the shocking revelation.

"For example, head-scratching about the face or other parts of the head is explained in your Encyclopedia of North American Birds, p. 489, as our responses to irritations in areas where we cannot reach with our bill. Not so!" These are actually warning signals of danger for birds with impaired hearing, I was told.

Avian lookouts even vary such forms of communication to indicate direction of the danger. "Reaching the head from below the upraised wing, means danger to the right. Reaching over the

Hearing loss occurs most frequently among urban flocks. The worst culprits for perching birds are leaf blowers, chain saws, lawn mowers and cars booming rap music on high decibel loudspeakers.

For buteos there are other sources. High-fliers soaring near airports are devastated by noisy aircraft, especially helicopters. Some hawks report that they are left to identify their prey almost solely by sight. Thus, the plight of owls is even greater at night, since they rely on the rustling of leaves below their perch for clues to location of prey.

Missing the hunger cries of their young is more than a nuisance. Its effect is life-threatening. Research has shown that normal adults who can hear the cries of hungry chicks, feed them much more frequently. Imagine the difficulty ceated when parents must rely on sign language of their nesting brood, such as the length of stretched neck, size of their gape and flapping of tiny wings. It has also been observed that chicks not fed frequently enough will stop their gaping responses after four or five days. Thus a vicious circle threatens to lower the production rate of birds trapped in noise-infested urban habitats.

Not surprisingly, birds are watching our progress in manufacturing hearing aids, hoping for an instrument small enough to insert in injured avian ears. And Armchair Activists must now agitate for noise abatement legislation not only to improve human happiness, but to assure the survival of birds as well.