The BEST Guide for Learning Bird Calls!

I spend alot of time outdoors and have always been curious about identifying birds, trees and wildflowers around me. This set of CDs is the second set of bird calls I have purchased (and this does not even include all the on-line browsing and listening at the USGS Patuxent site). I have had a lot of difficulty with single bird/associated song or call types of audio (ie. name of bird-recording of call, next bird...). There are a lot of birds out there, and it is tough memory recall when you have a CD of 200 some bird calls and it is basically rote memorization to try to remember them. Not a whole lot of fun if you are a relative amateur and trying to learn to identify birds by call confidently. Those CDs will probably be useful for reference at a later time, but not now.

I then picked up the Learning By Ear CDs. Wow! This is what I should have bought a long time ago. There are 85 birds included on these 3 CDs, but they are grouped in a very intelligent fashion. Instead of just rote memorization, the birds are grouped by category. There is a really nice introduction on the first CD and then birds are presented BY GROUP (ie. Sing-Songers, Chippers and Trillers, Name-Sayers...). I cannot emphasize enough how useful this approach is to learning. Instead of just giving the sounds of, say, a Downy Woodpeckers, the CD pairs similar sounding woodpeckers so you learn that a Downy has a descending whinny and a Hairy Woodpecker has an even sounding rattle - they are compared and contrasted together it is very effective. I learned more listening to these CDs than I ever learned through rote memorization. All three CDs contain bird groupings and the last CD also includes groupings by HABITAT as well: Forest Edges, Forest Interiors, Throughout, Freshwater Wetlands, Southern Forests, Northern Forests, Hedgerows and Thickets, Old Field and Open Fields, Oak-Pine Woodlands, and Urban Parks. The informational booklet included with the CDs is also quite nice and includes summaries of the information presented on the CD along with information found in standard birding books. All together, it makes a nice, complete set if you are just starting out or want to improve your identifying skills.

To summarize, if you are interested in learning to identify birds based on their songs and calls, ignore all the other CDs out there and just pick this set up. Once you become confident and learn from these CDs, you will be better able to evaluate if you need to buy anything else. Don't forget also that these things take effort. You cannot just pop the discs in and expect to become an expert overnight. I listen on my commutes to and from work, take a lot of walks in the woods, and learn a group at a time.

This is IT good people.

It is time I have said something about this series by Dick Walton. I am considered an ear-birding "God". There is virtually nothing I cannot identify in the field. When I go out with a group half act like they should start worshiping and the other half like they should run as I have apparently sold my soul to the devil and/or am some kind of evil trickster. I am never found wrong on an ear call, period, and I call everything.

And how did this come about? Simple--I bought Walton's complete "Birding by Ear" series and put in the necessary time to master it. I have also owned every other American bird song recording published since 1960. Walton's "Birding by Ear" series
stands alone as a MASTERPIECE OF INSTRUCTION.

This is IT people. Does it involve work? Repetition? Yes! Show me anything else worthwhile in life that does not! But Walton reduces the work to a nubbin of other CD/tape sets. He is the great killer of confusion and bewilderment in bird song learning.
I take off my hat to a great educator I have never met or spoken to.

Gerald Haiar

"Who cooks for you?"

Listening to this 3-CD set for the first time, I cycled through an entire manic-depressive episode. The depression occurred early on the first CD, track 4--"Sing-Songers." If there was one bird song I thought I knew it was the American Robin's cheerful warble. Now I learn that there are three other birds that sound EXACTLY like the robin to me: the Scarlet Tanager; the Summer Tanager; and the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.

Oh no! I'm going to have to listen to these CDs a hundred times before I can even be confident of the robin again.

Later that same night, as I was crawling moodily into bed, I cranked open the window and heard a series of low hoots that sounded like, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?"--Instant mood swing. I lay there grinning in the dark, because I had just identified a Barred Owl. He sounded exactly like he did on these CDs.

There is something so satisfying about being able to identify a song or a flower or even an animal track, as a reminder of the lives being lived around us--some of them very strange and beautiful. You will be amazed the first time you step outside after listening to these CDs, by how the orchestra of bird song begins to sort itself out into individual instruments. I was able to identify the Song Sparrow and the Oven Bird--two shy, unseen songsters that had been puzzling me for years.

Each of the tracks in this CD set contains narration as well as bird calls and bird song. Birds are grouped on a track based on similarity of song, which is why you'll find the Mourning Dove on the Owl track. According to the narrator, many people mistake them for owls.

At the end of the third CD, bird songs and calls are grouped together by habitat. To test yourself, listen to the birds and try to recognize them without referring to the accompanying text insert. I averaged round three out of ten correct identifications per group, but I expect to do better as I replay these fascinating CDs.

Added benefit: this 'Guide to Birdsong Identification' will bewitch any resident cats. One of mine is perched on the CD player right now, trying to peer into a speaker.