A couple weeks ago I wrote about my first experience with learning to keep track of house cats by listening to bird language.  The story continues to evolve and I'm always amazed at how complex and changing nature can be.  There's always something new to learn about the things I study.

Today when I was outside at lunchtime I noticed a black cat walking along the edge of a fence near where I was sitting.  It hadn't seen me and it was moving along in the classic cat style where it would take a few steps and then pause and look around before continuing on it's trajectory.

I remembered what one of my mentors of bird language said to a group of people that had joined to study the birds on a property in California.  He said that one of the biggest mistakes people make when they see a predator that causes a alarmed disturbance in the landscape is to focus on the predator.

It's a natural response because the predator is the center of attention but he said that in those moments, the best thing you could do to learn more about the bird language is to look around and send your ears out to notice everything else that's happening in response to the predator.

I've been amazed in the past when I've seen a hawk and managed to pull myself away from the excitement of the moment to take in everything else that's going on in the scene.  It's incredible how much I miss when I focus in on the predator, and how much more I learn about bird language when I stretch my senses to everything else in the landscape around the hawk.

So this is exactly what I did with the cat.  I moved my eyes to watch it only peripherally and checked for signs of any bird alarms in the area.  I remembered the response that I've seen around cats on this property in the past but with this cat, there was absolutely nothing.  No response.  No Alarms.

Maybe the birds aren't active in that area at this time of day?
Maybe the birds don't feel threatened by this particular cat?

I have a few theories for why sometimes cats cause lots of alarming and intense excitement while at other times they seem to elicit no response.  In order to answer this question I need to watch this particular cat more often.

But the one thing I did notice was a little chipmunk.  As the cat slinked out of sight into the bushes a chipmunk bounded out of the forest from the opposite direction moving towards the cat and made a few sharp calls.  Brief but distinct.  Then it was quiet.

A few more seconds went by and it resumed it's alarms but this time in a way that I hear very regularly on this property.  If you know the Eastern chipmunk then you've probably heard their alarms that repeat over and over again sometimes getting faster, sometimes slower.  I've always wondered if these calls were actually alarms but today was the first time I had any sort of concrete evidence. 

I can't count the number of times when I've heard those alarms and discounted them because of their isolation from any other alarms yet here I was watching this chipmunk alarm in this very fashion all alone as looked towards the direction where the cat had gone.

It taught me that no matter how many times you see an alarm in action, there's always deeper and more subtle layers to pick up on.  I'll keep my eyes out for more lessons from this black cat and let you know what I discover.

Thanks for reading!

I like to tell bird language stories. 

When I say bird language, I mean the alarm system used by the birds to communicate when predators are moving through the forest. 

When I first heard that it was possible to tell from long distances simply by listening to the birds that there was an animal moving out in nature I was so fascinated by the possibility that I immediately started paying more attention to the birds.  I wanted to learn all their calls, songs and alarms so that I would be able to understand by their behavior when there were animals around and eventually be able to see those animals.

I remember the first really clear experience for me of using bird alarms to find an animal came one summer a few years ago.  I was out at the spot in my yard where I sit to watch the birds and generally just unwind and re-energize from my day.  I had been sitting at this spot for a few months and I had started to learn the regular patterns of behavior given by the birds there. 

I noticed however on this day amongst the usual visitors and activities that there were two song sparrows making some intense calls in the thick area of firs behind the bird feeder.  I listened and waited for a long time and it seemed like they were making noise for no reason until into view from that exact area came a local house cat. 

As she moved along the edge of my yard I could see the sparrows moving along with her, looking down and making their scolding alarm calls.  As the cat moved out of my yard and down towards the creek beside my neighbors yard I could follow the sound of those alarms as they passed from the song sparrows to the hermit thrush and onward to the juncos. 

It was so incredible to be able to follow the movements of the cat even after the cat left my sight line.

The real test of my observations for me however is whether or not I can reproduce my success.  Whether or not I had heard the alarms I still would have seen the cat... so I set out discover if I could find a cat that would normally have escaped my awareness by paying attention to the bird language.

A few days later I was outside laying in the sun when I heard the tacking alarms of some juncos.  They were alarming in the same way I had heard around the cat earlier in the week.  I wondered "could that be another cat?"

I followed the source of the noise around the side of the house and I had a clear sight to the firs where the birds were centered.  I didn't see anything but continued to stalk up as quietly as I could to try and spot what the juncos were looking at. 

I approached a small trail on the far side of the yard and right near where the juncos were making that sound, I spooked a cat who had been slinking up the trail.  My cat test was successful. 

I love Bird Language.