The English language is rich with abstract words to describe visual perception.  If I told you to picture a food item, cylindrical in shape, perhaps 6″ long and 3/4″ in diameter, with rounded, slightly puckered ends, and a pinkish hue, you’d likely call up an image of a hot dog.  But if instead I wanted to describe a sound, my options would be much more limited.  Musicians have a technical language for describing musical sounds, involving pitch, timbre, duration, and harmonic structure, but these terms don’t help much if I want to tell you about Musti’s bark.   Birders regularly confront this poverty of language when they talk about avian vocalizations. One solution we employ is “transliteration,” where birdsong is interpreted as human language, resulting…