Tip of the Month

Learn Bird Songs and Calls

You can greatly enhance your birding experience by learning the birds songs and calls. By knowing these vocalizations you will undoubtedly end up seeing more birds on your outings. There are also some species that are incredibly difficult to identify without hearing and knowing their songs, such as empidonax flycatchers.

There are many products on the market to help you learn the vocalizations of birds. For beginners, we recommend starting with the Peterson Field Guides Birding by Ear series. They offer Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America, More Birding by Ear Eastern and Central North America , and A Field Guide to Western Bird Songs . These CDs group similarly sounding species together to help you learn to differentiate between them.

As you start to learn more about the vocalizations, the Stokes Guides are a great resource. They offer an Eastern and a Western Guide. Unlike the Peterson Guides, these CDs are broken down by species so it is much easier to find a single bird and listen to its songs and calls.

There are also a few sites online that offer many recordings free of charge. You can learn about many species and their vocalizations at http://www.whatbird.com, http://www.allaboutbirds.org/, and http://sibley.enature.com/.

To purchase any of the CDs listed above just click on the link to go to Amazon.com. If you have any question about bird vocalizations or other identification issue please email me at robert.ripma@nuttybirder.com.

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