This site aims to fulfil a few functions. I'd like to use it as a place to publish bird recordings and any thoughts I manage to cobble together on bird sounds, bird recording and the like. Maybe a recording that I like, or a sonogram I think is interesting, or a lesson I have learned.

 

I'd also like it to become a repository of pages that help others to learn about identifying birds from their songs and calls.​Everyones birding journey starts at the beginning, and at the beginning of yours (and if you are like me, a lot of the way through the middle of it too…) you may well have stood next to some birding guru who seemed to pluck identifications out of the sky as birds flew over, calling. It may have been inspirational, or felt like a dark art, but either way it probably urged you to wonder ‘how do they do that?’… There is a very short and simple answer to that question. Practice. Perhaps underpinned by guidance from a mentor, maybe informed by reading field guides or listening to recordings, but most of all, practice.

 

However, you can’t practice if you don’t have the building blocks at the ready in the first place, and through the wonders of modern technology we can provide such a thing.​Some of us are much more adept at identifying birds by call than others. Much of this may be down to experience, but a lot of it may also be related to how our brains work, and how we learn, and remember. Acknowledging that, this site aims to employ a range of methods to help the reader build a foundation upon which to practice. The site will compare similar flight calls, helping the reader to learn how to differentiate between them through;

• Sonograms (which can be really useful in helping you ‘see’ the difference between the calls, making it easier for the brain to learn to hear those differences),

• Repetition (if you hear a hawfinch 10 times, you’re more likely to remember the call than if you hear it once),

• Comparison (hearing the similar calls one after another, several times, will help to cement the differences between them) and,

• through a spoken narrative of what I consider best the defines the differences (as we all benefit from a mnemonic or even just a nudge in the right direction).