Learning bird songs is one of the most important, and most challenging, skills for a birder to develop. There is some level of innate skill and hearing ability involved, but most of what is required is simply practice and study. It is similar to learning a foreign language, and with a little bit of effort anyone can expect incremental progress towards fluency.
New pages will be added here periodically, building into a series of pages discussing different aspects of identifying and understanding the songs and calls of birds.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Learning to listen to bird songs
Pitch, and bird song identification
Tempo, and bird song identification
Understanding Quality, in bird song identification
Trilled Songs of Eastern Birds
Planned for future posts:
More on the fundamental variables of bird song
Repetition
Understanding bird language
Taxonomy and bird songs
And more…
Trying to identify a large black bird somewhat like a raven in appearance, but sings beautifully, and from the sounds of things, also tap dances (on my tin roof)….please help. I am in NM,that’s when I started seeing this bird. The dancing started a couple of days ago.
I reside in Nevada and am familiar with a medium size bird with a white tail and grey body that has eight distinct sounds, quite appealing songs really but I do not know the bird’s name.
Hattiesburg MS October 2020. At my bird feeder is a little black, gray and white, with a long break like a carolina wren, sounds like the squeak of a rubber dog toy. Flies with the carolina black cap chick a dee and ruffed tit mouse. Eats black oil sunflower seeds. Please ID this bird can’t find on any other bird sites. Thank you for your assistance.
Unseen bird woke me at 4 am. I went to the piano to establish the pitch: above middle C: F# E (16th notes) F# (eighth note) quarter note rest, repeat. So: deedle-dee! deedle-dee! deedle-dee! on and on! It was still too dark to see.
I forgot to say I live in north central Washington State.
NW OREGON, JUST EAST OF THE COAST RANGE BIRD CALL??? YEAH HEE, YEAH HEE, YEAH HEE
ANY IDEAS? ON ACREAGE WITH TALL OAK AND EVERGREENS
What bird sings very clear pitch: sol mi/ sol mi/mi doh. I live south vancouver Island.
I’m at the Jersey Shore. There were a pair of reddish brown small birds that made clicking sounds, it wasn’t the usual bird like singing. It almost sounded like someone hitting a rock on the ground. Does anyone have an idea of what kind of birds these are?
A pair of small reddish brown birds are probably Carolina Wrens. Try this link and listen to the “pip” sound. Other wrens also fit that description and most make some kind of sharp clicking sound.