"Tone deaf" would-be birder seeks help.

[AshLee]

I absolutely love birds. Always have so I guess I always will. But there are several things that stop me from being a successful birder. One of these is most definitely my inability to recognize birds calls and song. Does anyone identify with this problem and know of any tricks I can use to get me up to speed?

Is it just a case of playing recordings of birds until I get the hang of it?

Does anyone have any tips for converting birds call/song "phrases" into words or sounds that we can easily recognize, along the lines of the Yellowhammer's "A Little Bit of Bread and no Cheeeeeeese", or describing the Marsh Tit's call as a sneeze?

Help gratefully received.

[Jonners]

I know what you mean AshLee. I used to have some LPs (remember those?) with bird songs on, narrated by Eric Simms I think. They were helpful, but there's some I'm still no good at particularly ones that I don't come across very often e.g. Willarsh Tits). The best way to learn, I reckon, is to hear the song or call, spend ages hunting the bird down, and eventually discover what it is: with all that effort, you're unlikely to quickly forget that song in a hurry

[AshLee]

Ah yes Jonners, a bit of suffering, that might help

I hunted one down the other day with a really unusual call (turned out to be a Great Tit that was having its little joke with me ).

Trouble is I've forgotten exactly what it said already (it was definitely saying something in English though). I think experience told me it was a tit, and to be honest, I would have guessed right from the size of its lungs.

But it's a tricky business I find, and a little disheartening when you can't get such a common bird right. But I'll persevere a little while longer. It might just all "click" one day

[Jonners]

My brother and I used to have an annual all-dayer at Minsmere, often starting while it was still dark, to see Nightjars on Dunwich Heath. I remember spending ages one year tracking down an elusive bird that was skulking in some bushes, and making the occasional unusual call - turned out to be a first nightingale, but I remember its richness. Chaffinch was the other one - a plaintive small tweet from high up a tree and we would be gawping up into the branches trying to track down some rare and elusive bird, only to find, time after time, that it was yet another chaffinch.

[thebeard]

going out and taking note of what you hear is the best way, experience is the key. hear the bird, note what it sounds like, try and spot it, and try to remember. spending time listening to samples on the web too, thats helped me. rspb has a good library, as does the site 'ukgardenbirds'. xeno-canto is good too, google it, phoebe recommended it to me and its very good

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by AshLee

.....there are several things that stop me from being a successful birder. One of these is most definitely my inability to recognize birds calls and song.

You & probably thousands of us, so I shouldn't worry about it.

At least you can hear them. I sometimes wonder how many I miss 'cause their calls are out of my hearing range. And it's not only birds I don't hear, crickets & grasshoppers, I have to see the little blighters move.

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by AshLee

I hunted one down the other day with a really unusual call (turned out to be a Great Tit that was having its little joke with me ).

As with learning most things you need to start off small and gradually learn. Start by concentrating only on the birds you can hear from your house/garden, and when you here them spend time finding them and identifying them by sight as Jonners suggests. You may have to find and identify them several times before the songs and calls start to stick but they will do eventually. Don't worry too much about identifying the birds you hear elsewhere until you know the ones where you live well - that way you hopefully won't 'waste' too much time searching for birds that turn out to be one you see everyday in the garden (Great Tits and Chaffinches will fool you time and time again though because they have so many different calls - they still get me thinking something unusual is hiding in a bush eventually).

You should soon start picking out your garden birds by call when you are out and about (by recognising the calls as something you hear at home). Once you find you can do this start regularly visiting a local reserve and start learning the birds in one habitat at a time, by listening for calls you don't recognise and finding the birds. When you then go somewhere else you might not immediately recognise the species of bird you can hear, but you might remember where you have heard it (at home, by your local pond etc), which may jog your memory. It is true that the longer it takes you to find a calling bird, the more likely the call is to stick - even if you only remember it subconciously.

I don't think that recordings are a great way of learning songs and calls initially, but they can be a useful way of reminding yourself what birds you have heard before sound like, and can help seperate species if you already have a good idea what they may be.

Roy

[Jenny W]

I'm tone deaf too and despite what people say I believe it is harder for people who don't have a musical ear, but I've managed to learn bird song - eventually! The best thing I did was to do a common bird census. I had a basic knowledge when I started but by the end I'd learnt heaps. I think someone has already said, when you hear a sound, put in the effort to track the bird down and see it if you can. That's how I learnt mostly - time consuming, but I found it worked wonders for me

[Synn]

Best thing to do if you hear a song is to write down how it roughly goes, so that if you're listening to a CD to hear it you don't forget how it sounded

[SheffieldLass]

I've got the Collins field Guide, by Geoff Sample (which is 2 cds plus book), which I found/find very useful. Not everything is in there, but there is quite a lot. He tells you what is calling with each recording, as does the book, and he also pinpoints some of the distinctive sounds. I listened to it very carefully a few times with the book, then also let it run in the background so my ears got used to some of the calls. (I recognised a quail that way - the sound had got imprinted in my brain, knew it was on the cd somewhere, and was able to check it out). I do revisions regularly, running it in the background and more careful listening, particularly at the beginning of each migrant period .. it is easy to get rusty when the birds have been absent for a few months. Today I puzzled for a few minutes over a magpie call ... I knew I knew it, and then my brain woke up, but it made me realise that I've not seen/heard many magpies recently, and why I'd got rusty on that one.

(I've also got a cd on woodland birds which I was given when I signed up to do the BTO's Scarce Woodland Bird Survey, also by Geoff Sample, which is excellent, gives their songs and contact/alarm calls, but don't know if that one is commercially available.)

Best to learn in areas where there are not many birds around at first, so that you can concentrate on individual calls. Dawn chorus is NOT the place to start learning, or a bird-busy woodland at the start of the breeding season - just too many sounds all at one time, very confusing, even when you are quite proficient.

I had a great tit teasing me today... I read somewhere that if there is a sound in woodland that you just don't recognise it will be a great tit .... and I've found that is often the case. They can produce some extraordinary sounds, nothing like their typical 'teacher' call.