GOLF Some birds aren't par for course

Whether they were natural sounds or tapes during the Masters, the species were finally right, birders say.
By LISA de MORAES
WASHINGTON POST
Some viewers of the Masters golf tournament on CBS last weekend were not watching for birdies -- they were listening for them.
Birders wanted to hear whether CBS would make good on its pledge to stop using taped bird sounds as background noise during golf tournaments.
Last year, alert birders noticed that some songs they heard during golf tournaments on CBS were from birds that were out of season or out of place. Like the silvery song of a canyon wren -- a bird never seen east of Texas -- during coverage of the Buick Open in Michigan. Or the thin whistle of a white-throated sparrow, not a bird of summer in the South, during August's PGA Championship in Kentucky.
Caught in their game by The Post's D'Vera Cohn, CBS confessed that it had been dubbing in taped birdcalls for viewers at home and promised to knock it off.
Listening in: Patricia Moore, a North Carolina birder, reported hearing the following birds during the last five holes of the Masters on Sunday: eastern towhee, blue jay, Carolina wren, northern cardinal, American robin and northern mockingbird.
All are the right birds for this time of year in Augusta, Ga., she said.
Ken Hollinga, conference and convention manager for the American Birding Association in Springfield, told Cohn he heard a tufted titmouse, a Carolina wren, an eastern towhee and "a couple of blue jays. ... These are absolutely birds that would be on that golf course somewhere."
Hollinga said he noticed the change, "and I think a lot of other people noticed it." You betcha.
But one question remained unanswered: Did CBS merely wise up and enlist its own birders to pop in the appropriate birds on tape, or did the network actually limit itself to the real thing?
"I don't know what they did, but they got it right," Hollinga said, adding, "I'm not upset if they used a tape."