H is for Hawfinch (and hearing)



I have touched upon my hearing loss previously in ND&B posts, but since then there has been developments.

It must have been back in that strangely blame-free pre-Covid year of 2019 that I first noticed that my ears were not fully functioning. On a mid-summer walk through a meadow with my eldest daughter, she commented on the noise that the 'grasshoppers' were making. I stood still and listened. I couldn't hear a single one. This was soon followed by my failure to pick up the screams from a high flying flock of Swifts; the realisation that migrant Tree Pipits had not really become exceedingly rare but was down to the fact that I couldn't hear them call; and that most evocative of autumn night noises, calling Redwings, were out of my aural reach (unless they were very close). The final straw that broke this birder's back was last winter, standing with another birder on Ranmore Common, he picking up and announcing incoming Hawfinches whilst I stood there in a silence of muffled cotton-wool a until the finches were above our heads and I could finally hear them. So I went for a hearing test...

As expected, my upper-end register was shot to pieces. Apparently this is a common age-related deterioration, down to the sensitive hair cells in the ear's cochlea dying away. The audiologist was keen to offer me a pair of discreet hearing aids for the princely sum of £2,000, an amount that made me weigh up the pros and cons of not hearing night-time Redwing calls again - but was rescued by some kind soul pointing out that if you go to Specsavers they can provide acceptable hearing aids for free (NHS funded). I did wrestle with my conscience a bit - did I want to drain the NHS of a couple of grand just so that I could hear a few natural history sounds once more? My compromise was to explain all this to the Specsavers audiologist, to come clean about not needing them for participating in conversations and that I didn't have to have the TV and radio turned up to 11 before I could hear anything. Even with this confession before him he had no problem in granting me a pair of hearing aids, plus a years supply of batteries. My use for them was, in his opinion, worthy. Thank you the NHS!

I received them in the late-summer of last year and have used them only when birding. And they work. I can now pick up all of those sounds that I thought beyond me. But what has been most surprising is the number of bird calls that I didn't know I had been missing. I knew that I could still hear crests. What I didn't know was that I was only picking up a small percentage of those present. With my hearing-aids a walk in the woods is now full of peeps, hooeets, chips, ticks and tucks. If I then take them out the calls melt away and I'm left in a rather woolly world where the quietness is broken by the odd bird call. Long-tailed Tits let me know that they a coming from way off - sometimes so far off that I have time to have a drink, check the phone and have a call of nature before they finally appear. They also possess a series of subtle calls that I had forgotten existed, hidden from me for more years than I care to admit to. My hearing was far, far worse than I realised.

So to this morning. Dawn. Ashurst Roughs on the Surrey North Downs, tucked in behind Box Hill. A steep sided slope that is full of Yew, oak and literally hundreds of fallen, now dead ash trees (picture below). Hearing aids in. I know that there will be Hawfinches as they have been visiting this site for several days - it is one of the best places in Surrey to watch this enigmatic species. I see my first birds by 07.30hrs and hear the first one soon afterwards. It is quite distant. I find a good spot towards the top of the slope which gives me a view into the tops of the trees at its bottom. There are maybe 25 birds flying in and out of view for the next hour, never settling for long, keeping their distance and very wary. Their calls are incessant. I take out my hearing aids and listen. Barely a call registers. I put them back in. The calls magically reappear! I really have been wandering around in a semi-silence that I didn't know existed. The Hawfinches keep my ears company and I am so grateful. But the greedy birder within me comes up to the surface - bring on those night-calling Redwings!

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