This Thursday Birdfreak is joint-presenting a bird sound quiz/tutorial for the local bird club (North Central Illinois Ornithological Society). While I’ve been known to be able to pick out many a bird sound out of the noise of traffic and chatting on field trips, teaching it is new.
Three club members are having a go at it, armed to the hilt with computers, speakers, and iPods (and iPhones) loaded with BirdJam software and custom playlists. We will be covering a large array of bird sounds and would greatly appreciate any tips or tricks that others have learned over the years. My group of birds is the “common” ones: those found in the area but may often be heard more easily than seen.
The list of birds is fairly long but our main goal is to provide the club with a preview to the upcoming Spring Bird Count in May as well as a primer for the Crane Count on April 18th. Here’s a simple trick we’ve learned to distinguish two of our favorite, closely-related warblers.
Blue-winged vs Golden-winged Warblers – two syllables in “blue-winged” = “bee-bzzz” and three syllables in “gold-en-winged” = “zee bzzz bzzz”.
We’ll have a recap of how the presentation goes and any sound identifying tips we come across but would really appreciate your input!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, this sounds like a presentation I could really use! I wish it wasn’t so far away (about 1h45m driving, darn). I’ll look forward to the recap. Best of luck!
Thanks much!! We’ll definitely recap as best as we can… hopefully this is something the bird club will do on a yearly basis and pool the greater knowledge of bird sounds together
Hey I need help identifying a song thats driving us nuts!!!! HELP HELP bird lovers.
Its a low tone then higher tone followed by 4 level lower tones. Deh Daaaaaaah Deh Daaaaah deah deah deah . Its always at dusk and we live in central maine. Can anyone help or direct us to a site that could????? My wife says its a really pretty song….if that helps. Loosing sleep in maine.
Paul – that’s a tough one but you should check out All About Birds. I’d go through the warblers and sparrows found in the east. All I’m thinking of right now is White-throated Sparrow based on the description. Hope that helps