To pish or not to pish

What are the tools of a bird-watcher? It is easy enough to come up with a list: binoculars / scope, field guides, notebooks, perhaps a GPS device...

But one of the more unusual tools in the birders arsenal is not a physically tangible object at all. It is "pishing", which refers to the act of making bird-like sounds, specifically, a soft "pish"-like sound,  to attract birds. 

In the above video, American naturalist Pete Dunne demonstrates how to do pishing and make other bird calls.

The first time I heard a birder do this recently on an LA Audubon society-led bird-watching trip, I was a bit skeptical. But the literature shows it really does work! Consider these two papers:

[1] J. R. Zimmerling and C. D. Ankney, "A Technique that increases detectability of passerine species during point counts", Journal of Field Ornithology 71(4):638-649, 2000.

The abstract of this paper starts out with:

During April–July 1997, we censused birds in three woodlands near Arnprior, Ontario, Canada using conventional point counts (n = 12) and point counts supplemented with “pishing” (n = 12), a well-known method for attracting various bird species. Overall, 3.6 (19%) more species were detected per census using pishing. Irrespective of statistical significance of individual species, 45 (74%) of the 61 species were detected on more days using pishing, whereas 5 (8%) species were detected on more days using the conventional method. A higher number of males and a higher number of visually detected species were recorded using pishing as compared to the conventional method, and these differences did not change with date. 

And the following paper by Langham et al. presents a hypothesis for why pishing works, based on the similarity of pishing to the scolding sounds of Titmouse:

[2] G. Langham et al., "Why pishing works: Titmouse (Paridae) scolds elicit a generalized response in bird communities", Ecoscience 13(4):485-496, 2006.

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There is, of course, an ethical issue that arises here. Is it really ok for a birder to, well, deceive birds into showing up? How much does it affect birds as they go about their everyday routines to respond to a false alarm?

The American Birding Association's code of ethics advises birders to "limit the use of recordings and other methods of attracting birds, and never use such methods in heavily birded areas, or for attracting any species that is Threatened, Endangered, or of Special Concern, or is rare in your local area." It also adds "if you are attracting birds to an area, ensure the birds are not exposed to predation from cats and other domestic animals, or dangers posed by artificial hazards."

(Come now, don't laugh! This is a serious matter. Banish that vision you just conjured up, of Silvester using pishing to lure little Tweety bird.)

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Anyway, the next time you see someone on a hiking trail making strange shushing sounds at no one in particular, please don't shake your head thinking "poor demented chap." It might just be me.