Birding By Ear -- Bird Song Identification

To start learning bird songs, it's easiest to begin with the birds you see in your own backyard and in your neighborhood. First, learn to visually identify a few of the most common birds in your area. You may want to buy a beginning Field Guide to Birds to help you learn what are the birds you're most likely to see.

Or if you live in the Eastern or Central part of the United States, browse through the photos on the two sites listed below, and see which are familiar to you:
Backyard Birding, Part 1.
Backyard Birding, Part 2

Then you need to take the time to observe and listen to the birds in your area. Be patient! Can you tell which birds are making which sounds? Do you notice that birds may have more than one sound? Usually birds have a particular song, and one or more calls. There may also be some variation in their songs and calls.

Most people in the United States are familiar with the American Robin, so that's an excellent bird to begin your birding by ear practice! Listen to the robin song, and compare it to the robin squawking call. Are these sounds familiar to you?

Listen to American Robin singing.
Listen to American Robin "tutting".

Photo of singing American Robin by ibm4381, CC 2.0

Besides the obvious enjoyment and satisfaction of knowing what bird you're listening to, learning bird songs and calls is an extra tool to help you identify birds.

Many birds can be identified from their unique colors, shapes, or sizes. But sometimes you might not be able to visually locate the bird, or perhaps the visual characteristics aren't enough for you to make a positive identification. The bird song or call will give you a better chance of identifying the bird. And being able to identify some bird songs will alert you to when certain birds are in the area. You'll become more attuned to what common birds are in your area, and you'll recognize when a less common bird appears.

Overall, learning to identify bird songs and calls gives us another way to appreciate what nature has to offer us, and our lives are richer because of it.

The wood thrush, pictured here, and the veery, mentioned earlier, look similar. Both birds are in the thrush family (as is the American Robin). Expert birders can visually tell the differences between the two, but that may be difficult for many of us amateur birders. It's also difficult to find these birds without hearing them first. The songs of these two birds have similarities, but you can also hear the differences.

Listen to the song of the Wood thrush.
Listen to the song of the Veery.

Photo of Wood thrush by Steve Maslowski, and in the public domain.

Beyond learning the common bird songs from my mother when I was young, I didn't easily learn other bird songs and calls until I took an ornithology (study of birds) class in college that included many hours of field identification practice. The professor and the teaching assistant were experts at identifying birds by sight, sound, and habitat.

You might be able to find a bird identification class offered in your community. Check out Community Recreation and Education classes, or workshops offered through local nature centers or parks.

Or maybe you have a friend who's an avid birder and could take you out to different areas to introduce you to a variety of birds. We've had birder friends who've let us "tag along" with them occasionally. It's amazing how many birds they could locate using visual and auditory clues. The bird songs helped them locate the general area of the bird, and sometimes we could then visually spot the bird.

You also might be able to find a local chapter of the Audubon Society or a similar association that leads birding outings and other bird identification programs. You'll find many experienced birders in groups like this who are very happy to share their knowledge of bird songs and calls!

Listen to Red-tailed hawk.

Photo of Red-tailed hawk by Mike Baird, CC 2.0

A "mnemonic device" is a memory aid to help you remember something. When you're learning to bird by ear and referring to bird identification guides and bird sound recordings, you'll come across many mnemonic phrases that will help you remember certain bird calls.

One of the most familiar mnemonic phrases is for the Black-capped Chickadee which is found throughout a good portion of the northern half of the United States and the lower half of Canada -- "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee" (but the Black-Capped Chickadee also has a sweet spring mating song, "pee wee", not to be confused with the Eastern Wood Pewee, which sounds more like a "pee-a-wee, pee-ur").

Listen here to a few bird songs and calls that have good mnemonic phrases:

Eastern Towhee -- "Drink your tea-ea-ea"
Whip-poor-will -- The name says it all.
Black-capped chickadee -- Some music and talk first, then the "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee"
White throated sparrow -- "Poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody"
Black-throated green warbler -- "Zee zee zee zoo zee"
Barred Owl -- "Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all"

Photo of Black-capped chickadee by mybulldog, CC 2.0

One of the early signs of spring here in SE Michigan is when we start hearing the cardinals sing again. They're quiet during the winter, but begin singing again sometime in mid-late February. Then for the rest of spring and early summer, we hear the cardinals early in the morning, and the robins join in shortly after that. It's lovely to wake up to bird song!

So why do these birds sing, especially in the spring? The simple answer is that the males sing to attract a mate in the spring, which will give them time to build a nest, lay eggs, and raise their young during the warm months. A strong, sustained song suggests that the male bird is healthy and strong, and would make a good mate while successfully protecting his territory.

But how do they know when to start singing in the spring? Longer hours of light during the late winter / early spring trigger the release of hormones in the male songbirds which stimulates them to sing.

Image of singing cardinal in the spring by Johnath CC BY-SA 2.0

To learn more, read Why Do Birds Sing.

Also listen to BirdNote's Why Birds Sing. This includes the song of the Blackheaded Grosbeak, a few other spring birdsongs, and part of Frankie Lymon's 1950's song Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Why Do Birds Sing)

Earlier this summer I was hearing what I thought was a very unusual bird song, but it turned out to be a robin "with an accent". It had elements of a "typical" robin's song, but there was enough variation and extra notes added that I was sure it was a different bird until I visually spotted it while it was singing. I had assumed that all robins, and other songbirds in general, were born knowing their species songs, and that there was very little variation within a species.

It turns out that the songs of songbirds aren't innate -- male juvenile songbirds learn from their fathers, and there can be variations in different parts of the country. For instance, the Minnesota cardinal sounds a little different than the Michigan cardinal. The young males practice throughout the summer to learn their fathers songs, so that in the spring they can skillfully sing their own songs to claim their territory and to attract a mate. They pick up the local song dialects where they set up their own territories.

Read more in Young Birds Go to "Song School"

Photo of juvenile cardinal by ibm4381, CC 2.0 License

Bird songs and sound samples on this page are from:
FindSounds
Common Birds of Atlanta
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: Bird Songs
BirdNote (on some NPR stations)

Also check out the following for more bird sounds:
Earbirding.com -- A blog about recording, identifying, and interpreting bird songs
Macaulay Library, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology -- "the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings"