Bird Nerds of iNat, what are y’alls tips for learning bird calls? I’m amazed at how you can hear a 2-3 second clip and immediately ID it to family/genus/species. Can you help me learn this superpower? Are there any apps/websites I should use to help practice? I try to use the books we have at our house, but it is obviously much harder than hearing the actual call.
Thanks in advance :)
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I use the Merlin app to id songs I don’t know, which then become songs I do know!
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For me, it’s mostly just memorization. I’ll see a bird, hear its call, and then now I’d know what bird makes that call. If I hear a call I don’t recognize, I also use the Merlin app to get suggestions
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I have Stokes bird CDs which helped a lot, and All About Birds is a great resource.
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the way my brain works, it helps to see a particular bird actually making a particular call. so i just try to get out with the birds when they’re calling and singing and try to see them actually make the sounds they make. i’ve also found that making videos of the calls is sort of a force multiplier because i can go back home and watch a particular call or song as much as i want whenever i want. i find that my own videos are often better for learning than some of the generic ones i find online – even if the ones online are better quality technically – because my videos are guaranteed to have songs from birds in my particular area (ex. the Carolina Wrens in my area have abbreviated songs that none of the popular online guides note), and they also tie back to a previous actual experience i had.
going out birding with a group (such as a local bird survey) led by a birder who is really good at birding by ear can help, as can using a sound recognition app like Merlin, but i think of these methods as most helpful when you’re just starting to learn the birds in a particular area and need help figuring out what’s interesting and what’s worth prioritizing effort to look for. but, for me, even once i’ve been told what made a particular sound, i still want to make an extra effort to see the actual bird calling or singing to really cement a bird sound in my brain. once i’ve learned a lot of bird sounds in the area, then i’m more able to prioritize myself just based on “what is that sound that i don’t recognize?”.
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I find mnemonics very helpful, e.g., Yellowhammer sings “a little bit of bread and no cheeeese”
There’s no substitute for putting in the hard work of tracking down a singing bird and identifying it visually, to help you remember the song and link it to the bird.
Merlin is also nice because it offers ID suggestions and you can also watch the spectrogram at the same time, but beware that it does make mistakes.
I’d also suggest not to try and learn too many species at once. Focus on one or two, master those, then move on to the next.
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Yellowhammer?
It’s a common species in Europe and parts of Asia (and introduced in New Zealand)
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Thank you! Fortunately I have some family members who are better with birds than me (although sadly not on iNat). I’ll be sure to ask my dad about calls next time we are hiking/fishing together :)
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Thank you! I really like the mnemonics idea, definitely gonna steal that one :)
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I agree with @pisum. You could hang out with birders and have them call out what they hear when they see or hear a bird. If you don’t know any birders, volunteer to tally for a bird count. But Merlin is good for a “What’s That?” moment.
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go to ebird.org and ‘hang out’ at hotspots until you meet someone.
http://www.thewarblerguide.com/uploads/9/5/6/8/95684880/memorizingbirdsongs.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JMoAo-CmL8
So iNat is not letting me repost, when I accidentally replied to someone else instead of to the main thread, if the ‘body is too similar’. Thus, I had to type this.
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Search the internet for other websites. There is one xeno-canto website with a big collection of bird sounds and frog sounds. Some bird sounds are muted, because maybe those birds are targets of bird trapping.
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Start slow. Learn the common things around you before adding more species. Also recognize that some birds are very variable, <I’m looking at you titmouse>. Chasing down anything you have doubts about is part of the process. Is that a chipping sparrow? Ah, there it is, yes.
I have the iBird app on my phone so I can listen and learn. I can also check against it if I can’t locate the bird. In the US, this website is helpful too. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse
And, yes, birding with experienced folks can help. I got tired of going out with birders and saying “I found about 15 species. How many did you find?” 43. So I started learning birds sounds at the half-century mark. What do ya know? There’s about 4x as many birds around.
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Thank you!!
I found on bird counts that if I did not know the songs and calls I was missing ~90% of what was around me.
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Like most things, it just took me a lot of practice. I’d recommend spending time in your area doing complete eBird checklists visually. Use an app like Merlin, or guidebook to help you get started. You will start to familiarize with more and more of the sounds the more you do. As you get familiar with the usual suspects, you will start to pick up on new things expanding your memorization.
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They are helpful up to a point, but they are limited by differences in individual perception. For instance, most guides claim that the Carolina Wren sings “teakettle - teakettle - teakettle.” While I have heard that in certain localities, most Carolina Wrens sound to me more like “jubilee - jubilee - jubilee.” Same number of syllables, same accent, but different rhythm.
When this happens, I can often figure it out by what song it sound like part of. Song Sparrows and White-Crowned Sparrows have rather long songs, but the truncated versions just sound like the first few notes of the full version.
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I do pretty much exactly what you said in the first paragraph, but instead of making videos, I just watch them.