By Martha Steele | Reprinted with permission from Bird Observer October 2022, Volume 50, Number 5:350-352. www.birdobserver.org.
Recently, Bob and I birded with Jerry Berrier, who has been totally blind from birth due to retinopathy of prematurity, where the infant receives too much oxygen following birth. Our morning walk along trails in the Middlesex Fells in Medford was memorable for the unusual presence of both Yellow-billed and Black-billed cuckoos. Jerry held on to Bob’s elbow as they walked, while Alvin and I trailed behind them. We were navigating a tricky section of the trail with numerous uneven rocks and roots when my focus was interrupted with an unfamiliar sound. Bob yelled out, “Yellow-billed Cuckoo!” Two individuals were calling to each other and their calls penetrated through the forest. It was a life bird for Jerry and only the second time I had heard this species. Before the end of the walk, we also heard the more common Black-billed Cuckoo to round out a wonderful morning of birding.
Jerry was introduced to birding while in college. He was born and grew up in Pittsburgh and in 1970, he matriculated into the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For his psychology major he was required to take a biology course. As a substitute for laboratory requirements in the course, his professor gave Jerry his Cornell bird records, created and narrated by Arthur Allen, and asked Jerry to learn the songs on the records. At the end of the semester, the professor took Jerry on a walk in the woods and quizzed him on his recognition of bird songs. Jerry was hooked. He recalled that the Northern Cardinal had a beautifully pure song that was easy to remember and he particularly enjoyed learning the song of the Eastern Towhee.
After completing college, Jerry worked as a counselor for a blindness organization before landing a job near Pittsburgh with a phone company that eventually became Verizon. He served as an employment interviewer, career counselor, and finally assistant manager in the Verizon Center for Customers with Disabilities. In 1998, he accepted a transfer to the Boston area and continued working for Verizon until he retired after nearly 25 years of service.
What I find remarkable about Jerry’s skills as a birder is that he is virtually self-taught without ever having had the benefit of sighted mentors along the way. He listened to hours of bird recordings by any means he could lay his hands on, worked to memorize the songs, and then applied his auditory memory to identify birds in the field. In addition, he carried a cassette recorder everywhere he went to record any song he heard to help him compare it to other recordings he had compiled once he got back home. He has been inspired by a few conversations over the years with another birder, Lang Eliot, but for the most part, he has honed his considerable birding skills on his own.
Jerry’s learning experience contrasts sharply with mine, where I always had an expert mentor to help me identify the birds I saw and later heard, which seems to me to be far easier than the road Jerry traveled. We also learned to bird by ear by different paths. Jerry never experienced sight and thus learned to bird by ear from the beginning. In contrast, when I started birding in 1989, I still had excellent vision but was unable to hear bird songs due to hearing loss. In 2010, after receiving my first cochlear implant, and at a point where I was losing the ability to see birds, I started learning bird songs that I heard for the first time thanks to the implant. In a sense, I became a new birder twice, first learning birds by sight and then learning birds by their vocalizations.
Jerry laments being unable to see birds, feeling deeply the inability to perceive what he knows must be a visual pleasure. He muses that if he ever got sight, the first thing he would like to see is his family followed by a Red-tailed Hawk in flight. But, like me and so many others we know in the blindness community, he does not dwell on his loss, instead focusing on what he can enjoy. To some in the sighted world, it may seem depressing to imagine being blind. But such a life can be as satisfying, joyful, and enriching as any other. Despite occasional frustrations or sadness at our loss, this is our only life and we fervently want to live it.
And that life, for Jerry and me, is imbued with our love of birds and our natural environment. Being outdoors to listen for birds, we hear, smell, and touch so much more. Dew drops from trees onto our heads, mossy smells reach our noses, and trees creak and moan with the wind that rustles our hair. Listening to birds lifts our spirits, especially at the unexpected arrival of a beautiful song. While walking recently near his home, Jerry stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of a Wood Thrush. Its song echoed and reverberated all around him, creating a three-dimensional haunting and melodic solo avian symphony. On a frigid January day, Jerry groggily followed his guide dog in the early morning, muttering to him to hurry up and relieve himself so they could get back inside to warm up. Suddenly, from what seemed only yards away, he heard two Great Horned Owls calling to each other. He immediately straightened up, adrenaline rushing through his body, now fully awake and alert. He was awash with joy, standing still and oblivious to the cold or his dog. The birds continued calling to each other for three minutes and Jerry could not move. The experience not only made his day—it made his year, even his decade. Any birder can relate to the moment: imagine closing your eyes, hearing that sound, and you will feel the same thrill pulsating through your body at one of nature’s best offerings.
In these moments, Jerry’s experience is the same as it would be for any birder standing there with him. He is enjoying the moment as deeply as any birder, sighted or blind. You do not need to see birds to derive immense pleasure from their presence. Indeed, as I have written before in this column, I am a more relaxed birder now than when I had sight because I am focused entirely on the songs and not distracted by the often frustrating and time-consuming effort to see a singing bird in thick canopies or dense thickets.
Like all of us, Jerry sometimes misidentifies what he hears. He was puzzled by a song that he had great difficulty identifying, finally deciding it was a Prothonotary Warbler. But, upon further research on the natural history of the bird and additional comparisons of the bird’s song to various recordings he had in his library, he finally determined that it was “just” a House Finch. He felt a bit embarrassed at his gaffe, thinking it an egregious misidentification. On the flip side, he feels tremendous satisfaction at a successful identification of a bird he had never heard. For example, he recorded a song that he could not recall from any memory, returned to the house, and searched for a match. He landed on Yellow-breasted Chat, a thrilling accomplishment.
Over the years, Jerry has compiled more recordings to help him continue to nurture his birding skills. In the late 1980s, Dick Walton’s Birding by Ear was a great resource with enlightening verbal descriptions of songs. The drink your tea of the Eastern Towhee and the Oh, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody of the White-throated Sparrow were immensely helpful in remembering the birds. Later, the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern Region added to Jerry’s resources to consult for songs that he heard. Today, The Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the Larkwire app are useful resources for any birder, new or experienced, sighted or blind.
Jerry is constantly trying to improve his skills that, so far, are best for songbirds. He still has difficulty identifying certain birds, such as the American Goldfinch (I too sometimes have trouble with this bird, common as it is). But other birds that he originally had difficulty with, such as the Baltimore Oriole, are much easier now with his experience in the field. Some groups of birds need a lot more work, such as shorebirds, but for him, it is more challenging to get to locations with shorebird numbers to start to learn their vocalizations well.
Although he misses what he knows must be the visual beauty of the birds he loves, bird sounds bring joy and wonderment into his life. He shares his love of birds with anyone he can, particularly those in the blindness or disability communities. Jerry has been working with Massachusetts Audubon for fifteen years as an accessibility consultant, helping to ensure those with physical challenges can pursue interests in birding, botany, or any other interest grounded in interacting with the natural world. Some of his contributions include assisting with writing and editing scripts for accessible trails, visiting accessible trail sites prior to construction to make recommendations, assisting with audio production—reading navigational instructions, adding bird sounds, editing scripts read by local celebrities—and helping coordinate testing of partially completed trails by individuals with various disabilities. In 2022, Jerry joined Team Nuthatch for the World Series of Birding in New Jersey. The team consisted solely of birders with access challenges, the first ever such team for this event.
Jerry is always open to birding with sighted birders who can walk with him in birding destinations and share what they are hearing. He lives with his wife in Malden and can work with birders to find a mutually convenient location to meet for a morning or day of birding. Jerry can be reached at jerry.berrier@gmail.com.
Martha Steele, a former editor of Bird Observer, has been progressively losing vision due to retinitis pigmentosa and is legally blind. Thanks to a cochlear implant, she is now learning to identify birds from their songs and calls. Martha lives with her husband Bob Stymeist, in Arlington. Martha can be reached at marthajs@verizon.net.