For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking part in some training with my local BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) team on bird identification, focusing on songs and calls. This has involved spending a few mornings in lively online meetings, learning about sonograms and silhouettes, doing a bit of homework, and most of all, getting outside and listening.

For someone with an unbalanced body who has to continually look where I am going (looking at or for a bird is probably the principal reason for my many outdoor falls) my ears rather than my eyes have become the best way of alerting me to an avian presence, and I’ve found over the past couple of years that I really love listening to birdsong, though I often find it difficult to identify or understand exactly what I’m hearing. Bird songs and calls are so fleeting, so ephemeral. The phrases are too fast to sing back to oneself, the tonal qualities are so very different to those of a human voice. While I’m out walking, I try to fix a sound, a sound-structure, in my memory, then, back at the house, struggle to match that sonic memory to the noises emerging from a phone app or the description of a particular bird’s song in the Collins Guide. Did that bird really sound like a squeaky toy or a rusty gate? Would I describe it differently? I was keen to learn more, and feel very grateful for the opportunity to do so from Ben and Steve at the BTO.

I really enjoyed the training, and one of the best things about it was its sense of complete inclusion: that everyone learns differently, and that everyone present, to a greater or lesser extent, had something to learn. I found the focus on memory aids really interesting, since like many people, I have a wide range of cues and associations upon which I draw to help me identify, and distinguish between, the sounds made by different birds. For example, to me, the final, declarative flourish of a chaffinch song sounds like a sneeze, while a series of high tee tee tee tee notes heard in the middle of a phrase between two faster trills immediately reminds me of Mozart’s Queen of the Night, and tells me that bird’s a wren.

While participating in the training sessions, I found it very interesting that the emotive qualities of birdsong resonated completely differently for different people. For example, the song of the robin was described by some as being as bright or cheerful as the appearance of the bird, but I find it impossible to interpret the sweet, fruity notes rising from a bare branch on a cold winter’s day as anything other than wistful or plaintive. And while I find the rich doo-doo of a wood pigeon an invariably calm and comforting sonic accompaniment to the woodland environments in which it is heard, I was amused to to find others describing this sound as furtive, or creepy. To even begin to understand the sounds of birds, we all heavily rely on language and figurative association, on human similes and metaphors. Such metaphors are necessarily personal and partial—they may make sense only to ourselves, while being completely incomprehensible to others. Reflecting on the wide range of metaphors we participants used as memory cues in the days after my training, I have found myself wondering whether it could ever be even possible for a human to have an unmediated experience of birdsong, by which I mean one completely unburdened by figurative association? Perhaps if one were at the stage of being able to recognise birds as individuals, rather than as types, and their voices became as immediately recognisable to us as those of our human acquaintances? Imagine that!

The diverse memory aids, the curious human metaphors we all use to extend our knowledge of birds may be the antithesis of avian but in the end they do help us to learn much more, which can only be a good thing. And understanding my own faltering learning processes, my own forms of knowledge, as necessarily personal, incomplete and partial is certainly one of the ways in which I hope to become a better birder, and perhaps a better listener all round.

The BTO training taught me a lot about some of the birds I love to encounter every day, and has already enriched my knowledge enormously. I feel I’ve been equipped with a range of tools through which to approach the experience of listening to fleeting noises in a landscape, and to better understand and identify the structures and sounds of song. But though I now certainly feel much more confident about distinguishing between the songs of a great tit or a coal tit, I think the key thing I’ve taken away from my training is that not being sure about a bird is always the first step towards knowing more about it. In relation to birds, as to many other things, I suppose I’m very happy to be a novice, a beginner, someone who knows there’s always much more for me to discover. I’m certainly finding that learning about birds, as learning about anything, will always involve embracing the joy of not being sure.

Thanks to Ben and Steve at the BTO for some fantastic training – I’ll certainly be back for more! And thanks to Tom, as always, for photography.
You have me smiling at this story of bird song….on March 31 the 63rd birthday of my husband, I went out early for morning ablutions for our Border Terrier….there was a rabbit in the garden watching us, with statue like stillness and all the birds that were flitting through the trees were in song. I enjoy the song every morning of various birds as they each arrive for spring but never before have they ALL been in song at the same time. It was a wonderous thing to witness. It felt as though Mother Earth herself was serenading me. I silently gave thanks for it. Feathered foul are such wonderous creatures.
That gift stayed with me the whole of the day.
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Oh, I have so many thoughts in response to this beautiful post! My husband grew up birding with his father in the south of England. I became interested after we started dating. We were living in Japan at the time, and I remember visiting Nara and he heard an uguisu (Japanese bush warbler) singing. They have a glorious song but are very hard to spot. That day was his first time seeing one. Mine too! A few years later, on our honeymoon in Australia, he heard the call of a lyrebird, and we wandered off the path and saw it.
Now we are back in my hometown in America, teaching our daughter about birds. She’s three and a half, and can recognize dozens of birds by sight and some by sound. When we are out walking, she’ll say, “Do you hear that? Do you know what that bird is? I think you do. Yes, that’s right, it’s a crow! Well done, Mummy, I’m so proud of you!” In writing all this, I realize how much birding is tied up with love and family for me.
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this is so lovely, Kate – so many significant life moments marked with birdsong – and your daughter sounds amazing!
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We recently had our first sighting in years of a trio of evening grosbeaks. They’re big, lumbering, flashy birds that used to arrive in flocks at my parents’ home not far from where we live now in the Pacific Northwest. Delightedly watching them out our back window, I realized that I have leaned on others for bird identification for most of my life. Now that those helpers are mostly gone, I take special note of your words here, Kate, about using my “not knowing” as a point of departure for being more sure about the other creatures with whom I share this earth.
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I am obsessed with bird calls – or rather, one particular call. We have birds I call the “come ‘ere” birds because they hound me with their Siren call to the windows. And I never can pick out the “come ‘ere” bird. The many birds around our house look so sweet, so innocent and curious. And quiet. Until I turn my back.
I’ve learned I don’t have language to describe my birds’ songs. I ask the neighbors “what is the ‘come here’ bird” and they have no idea. When I look it up, zilch. But I did learn that every bird has 2 kinds of calls – a song, and an alarm, I think? Which only doubles my confusion. ;).
I’m sure my ancients would have known the calls and the trees and the grasses as Thoreau knew them, and I feel I’ve lost so much. But it’s not easy for me to learn!
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We’ve recently moved, to somewhere with actual gardens and therefore more birds. There was one which started singing as the sun came up. I called it the ‘sings the sun up’ bird.
The other day I was out in our garden and heard it again. Got the binoculars, got a visual. Blackbird. Job done.
I shall learn other bird songs. Before we merely had crows, two varieties of gull, magpie, and a charm of goldfinches. Oh, and the odd wood pigeon which would sit on the chimney pot and yell down it!
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Dear Kate,
Thank you for this reminder that not being certain is a gift and an opening — which has special resonance in the pandemic world, when we are all (I think it’s safe to say) weary of not being certain.
A book you might really enjoy reading, if you haven’t already, is Helen MacDonald’s “Vesper Flights” (its also a lovely listen, as she is the very good reader of the audio version of the book).
Do you have orioles in Scotland? They should be coming back to us in Massachusetts very soon. They are, I think, the contraltos of birdsong. They are hard to spy, cleverly perching very high in the trees. But catching a glimpse of one as it fly between those high perches has to be one of the most thrilling sights of each year for me — it’s the bird watching equivalent of seeing a shooting star out of the corner of your eye. You can’t be sure you saw it, but you KNOW that you did.
Sending all the very best to you and yours.
Susan
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Frighteningly, one of the critically endangered birds here in Australia (yes we do hold the awful record for species extinction) is changing its song. Apparently there are not enough individuals left for them to hold their “conversations” , attract mates and pass the song onto new generations. The Regent Honeyeater is now starting to imitate other birds which puts the species in even greater danger. And still we destroy habitat. We humans have much to be ashamed of.
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We recently moved home, to an area with gardens, open space and BIRDS! OK, we had the usual crows, magpies, pigeons, Wood Pigeons, gulls before. We even had the occasional Pied Wagtail, even sparrows and a charm of Goldfinches, with swallows and swifts come summer.
Here we also have a local Blackbird (confirmed visually today) which sings the sun up and down, and Great Tits considering the nest box already here, Then there’s the local harbour and Nature reserve – Chaffinches, Bullfinches, and many others shouting at the tops of their voices from deep within the blossoming Blackthorn bushes. Not to mention a whole raft of different ducks and ‘brown waders’ along the foreshore! We’re trying to learn bird songs too. Being in our sixties, our short-term memories are more of a hindrance than help, even trying to remember to record various calls so that we can try matching them when we get back home! But we’re enjoying it immensely
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Reading this at 18:00 on the banks of the River Great Ouse. So geese and ducks, some little bird trilling, and something I think is a tit, and a woodpecker drilling somewhere. The ubiquitous pigeon or a collared dove…. I also have a recording of a bird I heard earlier which was definitely new to me. I think I need this course.
I love the song of the Robin, we have one that is totally enamoured of the streetlight outside our house and enjoyed serenading it at 2 or 3 in the morning. Husband is not so fond, but I can never be mad at it for being so in love.
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How delightful to live among such a variety of birds! Thanks for the thoughts and pictures. I look forward to my kids being capable of enough quiet outside that I can listen for songbirds! 😂 and for the return of summer, when the Longspurs and Snow buntings come back. for now I’m happy with the neighborly tulugaq, the enormous and intelligent arctic raven who makes enough different calls to keep us very entertained.
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American robins were named by English immigrants nostalgic for the tiny red-breasted bird of England. They are in the flycatcher family, while American robins are thrushes–big birds that charge across our lawn in flocks of 20 or more, pouncing on a bug, then dashing off to the next one. I’ve seen them pull up 6-inch long worms and gobble them down. Once I was fortunate enough to see an English robin on a trip to Cambridge, I realized how different they are. Your robins are tiny, perky and so very cute and cheerful looking! Nevertheless, both robins are fun to watch.
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“embracing the joy of not being sure” – this phrase is so very beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes. It made me realize how much I missed that. Thank you for the reminder!
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Kate, I love your writing! Thank you for this brilliantly written post! I think that maybe part of the reason it is difficult for us humans to learn birdsongs is because of the variability due to the individual birds. We are so human oriented! This type of engagement with the natural world truly makes us better humans.
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I have just recently started learning birds, too! For quite some time I wanted to have a sit spot routine, as recommended by Jon Young (What the robin knows) but it was impossible with a small child. But now she is almost 5 and able to sit in the forest with me! Our country is in another, very depressing, lockdown, so we have been enjoying our time together in nature so much. We have a little notebook filling with notes on our observations, we note what we heard and what an app said it was, and if we could confirm it visually, and what we observed the birds doing, etc., and then we go home and Google everything and learn more and it’s incredible how much we have advanced in just one month! The forest is no longer this incomprehensible “wall of green” full of noise but we are able to recognize some of its inhabitants and understand what they are doing! We have bought a bird book with all European species and it’s so fun to read its transcriptions of the birds’ sounds, they look like some VERY weird nonsense poetry (“huidyb huidyb krredit krredit hohyja”). I also listened to a talk about how disappearing bird species are symptoms of the worsening state of the environment, and it really turned my attention to the role of birds as alarms. Individual birds signal what is happening around us in our immediate surroundings, but bird species do the same on a larger scale. Just like the canary in the mine…
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Thank you for this beautiful essay. Back in the Czech Republic I grew up as a daughter of a forester who would never remember names/faces of my friends but would (as I perceived it then) bore us to death telling detailed stories of a particular bird, given the chance. Now, many years later, I have a partner who’s very much like that – one of the first things he bought for our daughter when she could barely walk was a pair of tiny binoculars.. :-) Watching the two of them discussing (even arguing about) what bird they hear or see and planning family holidays based on what species lives where is everyday reality. My dad sure is happy.
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I forgot to mention ” Tweet of the day ” in BBC sounds.
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It takes a long time to learn bird songs, in part because, often, you hear them only for a few weeks a year as they migrate through your area or establish territories. But then, years later, you hear a Brown Creeper sing its breeding song and know it immediately, even though you haven’t heard that song for ten or eleven months.
I’ve found that I experience the world differently with each new group of organisms I learn. When I learned dragonflies, I finally noticed the difference between a fast, rocky stream and a slow, muddy one. I’m learning lichens now and I’m noticing the differences between the faces of a single boulder. The natural world is always a wonder.
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Could you recommend a good resource for lichens please? They are on my learning list :)
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I hate my hearing aids but one good reason to persevere with them is birdsong. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bird you can see, a robin on the garden fence, blue tits in the willow trees or green parakeets zooming over head (there is a large colony of them here in the Thames!) or those you can’t, the distant cuckoo or woodpecker (I know it’s not technically song) I happily stand and listen for as long as they wish to entertain me!
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Oh yes, much of this is true for me. A couple of winters ago, in a new job which meant time alone in the car, I decided to use those journeys to learn a new language. After toying with the idea of Welsh I quickly realised that is was the language of birds that really interested me. The RSPB Guide to Birdsong by Adrian Thomas is the resource I chose, and I’ve found it excellent. I’m no expert yet, but I’m a lot less clueless than before, and as you say, being able to use your ears instead of or as well as your eyes opens up the avian world in a wonderful way. The hidden-in-bushes birds, the treetop birds, the cycling-to-school birds, the I’m-inside-otherwise-occupied birds- they burst into my everyday life, and make it all the richer.
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I’m a visual birder…I find it near impossible to learn (and retain!) more than a few of the most common songs. But I always enjoy listening, and I often think “I should know that song!”. Then I just let it go and simply enjoy the music in my ears.
So many wonderful songs, even in common birds. The thrushes are some of my favorites…I assume European thrushes share a similar musicality?
And it is interesting how human associations affect our interpretations. When I first lived in the UK, both my landlord and I were surprised that the robin is a Christmas bird there, whilst in North America it is a harbinger of spring. Perhaps the springtime association is why some think of it as cheerful?
And is your ‘rusty gate’ a blackbird? Here in North America that is most definitely a red-winged blackbird (and a sound I know for sure!).
Early in my birding days I decided to focus on the pleasure of the experience, and not treat birding as a competition. Listing and counting just add stress and take away from the experience. So I choose to simply look, listen, and embrace the time amongst these amazing creatures.
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Robins: the fact that they are one of the only birds to sing through the winter here, as well as their wee red breasts, compounds the cheery association, I think.
Blackbirds: here not at all like rusty gates – thrush like, conversational, phrasing – and a leisurely, rather fruity tone. I think the rusty gate might have been a snipe’s alarm call.
My visual birding is completely rubbish unless the bird is right in front of me.
You are so right, though – it is not a competition!
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What is a blackbird in the UK in fact is a very close relative to the American Robin, which is a thrush. If you took an American Robin and dipped it in black ink except for its beak & its feet, it would look & act like a darn good facsimile of a UK blackbird. OTOH, what we call blackbirds in the states are completely unrelated to their UK namesakes and, as Susan Luni notes below, British Robins are not at all related to their American namesakes.
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this is fascinating, thanks, Tess. Oh, the perils of cross-Atlantic nomenclature!
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Have you seen this birdsong T-Shirt? https://levparikian.com/index.php/product/t-shirt-songs-of-birds-adult/ Except for the wren and the parakeet, the birds are different in the US or else I would get one for every birding friend here. There also is one on bird flight trajectories: https://levparikian.com/index.php/product/trajectories-adult-t-shirt/
I don’t know the gentleman & have no financial interest in these, just think they are very funny.
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One of the great joys of my childhood was learning from my dad ‘who is singing in the tree’. This one says ‘teacher teacher’ and that one sings his name, chickadee dee dee. Thank you for bringing this memory to the fore and for your insightful thoughts on learning.
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