Splitscreen by GNN – Red-tailed hawk, and Samuel Henderson – credit, CC BY-SA, Rhododendrites / Lori Henderson, released.Typically, when savants’ incredible natural talents are reported on in the news media, the stories feature musical instrument mastery or mathematical aptitude, but this 10-year-old from OKC has a different skill.
Samuel Henderson can fool professional audio field guides with his incredibly accurate bird calls.
Whether high or low, a trill or a gobble, Samuel seemingly has no limits on his capacity for laryngeal mimicry.
After he posted a video on TikTok of a trio of bird calls he performed in his school auditorium, his account co-managed with his mom Lori went viral, and he soon began posting more and more videos of different bird calls that have to be heard to be believed.
Lori was initially hesitant to allow Samuel to go before his peers and demonstrate such an unorthodox talent; she wasn’t sure how they’d react.
“It took us over 30 minutes to exit the gym due to the high fives and peers trying to get to him and compliment him on his performance,” Lori told the Audubon Society.
The society spoke to Samuel who said that he has mastered 50 bird calls over the past six years, and is always on the lookout for more. In fact, he recently did a fan request video on TikTok with suggestions from his followers.
“Once, I was at the OKC Zoo, and I saw a great-tailed grackle standing on a trash can, and I started copying it,” he says. “That was the first bird I started making a sound of.”
@diabetic4one Requested bird calls with Samuel #kidsoftiktok #autism #birdlovers #fypage #birdsoftiktok ♬ original sound - lori
It’s clear from his performance that Samuel, who has autism, understands the calls of the birds he wants to mimic on a much deeper level than most humans, as his mimicry visually displays contortions of his stomach and face—perhaps the key to arriving at the glass-shattering pitches necessary for the northern cardinal or red-tailed hawk.
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Audubon reports that Samuel’s bird calls are so accurate, he was able to fool the Merlin Birdsong app—a tool used by birders to help identify species in the field.
Lori says that since he was very young, Samuel often tried to mimic sounds in the world around him. He was always happiest and most serene when listening to birds though.
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Samuel wants to pursue a career studying birds, and has his sights set on a university degree from the birding capital of science—Cornell University’s lab of ornithology—a place he was invited to visit after taking off as a TikTok sensation.
WATCH the performance below…
@diabetic4one This is Samuel’s bird call performance at his schools talent show. He loved every minute of this #autism #birder #fypage #talent #agt ♬ original sound - lori
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