Exuberance bursts into song each spring as yards come alive with courting birds. The songs may sound jumbled to the untrained ear, but avid birders strain to distinguish the lyric trills of the finches from the complex melodies of the song sparrows and “cheer-a-lees” of the American robin.
Learning to identify bird songs takes practice, but it adds to the enjoyment of these early morning choruses. It can also take your bird watching skills to new heights.
Getting started can be tough, but happily there are websites that make it easy to compare what you’re hearing with likely candidates. My favorite is www.allaboutbirds.org, sponsored by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. The site has answers to just about all your bird-related questions, along with tips and tutorials for beginners and others trying to improve their skills.
It also helps to add a touch of silliness. The sillier the comparison, the better it works as a memory hook. Most of us associate “quack quack” with ducks, “honk” with geese, “caw” with crows, “cooing” with doves, “gobble gobble” with turkeys, and “who who who-o-o-o” with owls; but committing other bird songs to memory gets a bit more complicated.
Many birds seem to say their names — or what some think they sound like. Examples include the “chickadee-dee-dee” of a scolding black-capped chickadee and the “flicka, flicka, flicka” of the Northern flicker. The mourning dove gets its name from the mournful tone of its cooing.
As the differences get more subtle or complicated, however, people have to get more inventive with their mnemonic memory joggers. Of course, the “cheerio cheer-a-lee” of the American robin is one of the easier and more familiar ones.
One of my favorites is “potato chip and dip,” to describe both the flight note and behavior of the American goldfinch. Its undulating flyovers are punctuated with a repetitive “potato chip, potato chip.” The larger belted kingfisher has a similar undulating flight pattern, but accompanies it with an unmistakable rattle.
The red-winged blackbird announces himself as lord of his marshland harem with a brash, crsescendoed “fluer da lee,” and the Steller’s jay elbows its way to feeders with his boisterously high-pitched “Skreeech.”
On the East Coast, the Eastern towhee sings “drink your tea-he-he;” but its Western cousin, the spotted towhee, sings a buzzy version of the “tea-he-he,” as he scratches for bugs in the leaf litter.
Other popular bird-song mnemonics include the “sweet sweet, I’m so sweet” of the yellow warbler, and the “witchety witchety” of the common yellowthroat. We listen hopefully each spring for the “chip three beers” of our returning olive-sided flycatcher, who calls from the top of a nearby snag.
With practice, birders can use these memory hooks to discern subtle differences in the seasonal songs and chip notes of many birds. Early morning bird watchers can often identify and locate birds from their songs and sounds alone, giving bird watchers a big advantage when it comes to capturing them in photographs and crisply focused images.
— Gene Bullock is newsletter for Kitsap Audubon. Contact hium at genebullock@comcast.net.
The song of the male Red-winged Blackbird dominates many marshlands, where their flocks usually far outnumber other bird species.
The Common Yellowthorat is a large warbler that hangs out in the brushy margins of farm fields and wetlands. Its distinctive “withciety witchety” alarm call is unmistakeable. (Jay Wiggs / Contributed)
Red-breasted Nuthatches often hang upside down on suet feeders. Their song has been compared to the sound of a tiny tin bugle. (Carrie Griffis / Contributed)
