In or out?

It is just over a year since I took possession of my hearing aids - obtained because I had lost the ability to hear high-end frequency sounds which includes the calls of Swifts, Redwings, Tree Pipits (all unless they are close) plus most grasshoppers and crickets - and if I want to be completist, also some annoying human-manufactured bleeps and pulses that accompany certain electrical goods (but thankfully not fire or smoke alarms!) I only use them when vis-migging where the ability to hear calls is quite a plus point. However, since using them I am just as mindful to leave them in their cases. Here's why...

When I first tried my hearing aids out in the field it was really eye-opening (or should that be ear-opening). I could hear sounds that I didn't know existed. I stood at the top of the garden and marvelled at the bird calls that were audible. I took the ear pieces out and was at once plunged into a muffled semi-silence - yes I could hear a Robin calling and a nearby Great Tit - and when I put them back in the volume of sound (both audibly and in mass) was unbelievable. There was an electrical beep going off that I didn't (couldn't) hear, a background hum that had been missing and a flock of Long-tailed Tits several gardens up. I took them out again to see if I could pick up the Long-tailed Tits. No... but hold on, there! They were coming closer, and then were in the garden and surrounding me. Back in with the hearing aids and the sound was super-charged. What was also obvious was that the Long-tailed Tits were making all sorts of noises that I couldn't hear without my aural crutches. Sounds that once upon a time I had been privy to but in later years has slowly, imperceptibly been eroded away as my inner ear hair cells shrivelled up and died away. I wandered back indoors quite stunned by how much my hearing had reduced and by the fact that I had been unaware until I realised that I was missing out on the calls of certain species. My earliest hearing loss memories probably started in 2013 (a year after I had to concede to needing reading glasses), when I couldn't hear the noise that grasshoppers were making whilst I was picnicking in a Surrey meadow with my family - "surely you can hear those grasshoppers Pa?" -  I then started to notice it with birds in 2015. I was at Dungeness during the autumn and other birders kept hearing Tree Pipits calling as they flew, unseen, overhead. I just wasn't picking them up. Then, in the company of DBO warden David Walker, he was calling them out and I just stood there scratching my head as to why I couldn't. I could hear other species calling as they flew past, but not the Tree Pipits. If I did hear one it was very low and very close. Then it was Redwings. Those lovely calm October and November nights when they call in their hundreds, if not thousands. I would sit out to listen and not pick anything up - I knew they were there as birders nearby were hearing them. The next to go were Swifts. If there was a high flock chasing each other, not a scream to be heard, even though my wife could hear them. Some consolation was had in that both they, and Redwings, if low down, were registering with me - I hadn't entirely lost the ability to hear them. I then went and had a hearing test, which confirmed that I had a much reduced range in a certain frequency band.

So, what could be the downside to wearing the aids when out birding? There are a couple actually.

First up is the direction of sound. What I hear may be clear (for example, a calling Siskin overhead or a crest in a clump of Yews) but when I look towards where I believe the call to emanate from the sound magically moves. I can swivel on 360 degrees and still not chase the sound down. The hearing aids are not able to locate WHERE the sound comes from as well as your ears can. I have read that to take one ear piece out and just keep the one in can rectify this although I have had mixed results.

Second is the need to having to relearn bird calls (to a point). After years of muffled listening my current appreciation of what a species sounds like is skewed. If I walk into woodland and put them in I will be bombarded by all sorts of squeaks, whistles, chips and whines - it's like listening to an avant-garde German synth band from the late-70s. When I do identify them I am surprised that the unfamiliar calls will all be from very familiar species, such as Robins, various tits and Nuthatches. I have started to not use them at all if I am not vis-migging as wherever I go I keep thinking that I can hear Spotted Flycatchers - the hearing aids are producing manipulated sounds to my ears which, by their very nature, are not as they really sound. I was warned of this.

I will keep them in when skywatching. Any help with the presence of calls, especially those high up, is needed. But as for general birding? They'll stay in their case.