How to Identify Birds by Ear

Series Summary

Observing birds and studying their behavior is what birding and bird watching is all about. The best way to get started in birding is to begin in your own backyard. Backyard birding is an excellent way to learn about various types of bird species and their behavior. Types of bird songs and calls are even more numerous and varied than there are species of birds, but with a trained ear you'll be able to identify several species of birds on vocalization alone. Birds use songs, calls, alarms and other sounds for a variety of purposes, whether it be to stake a claim to territory, attract a mate, or warn others of a dangerous predator in the area. Here to teach you more about birding by ear is our birding expert from the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

In this free online video series, Wayne R. Petersen, Director of the Massachusetts Important Bird Areas Program at the Massachusetts Audubon Society gives tips and advice to those who wish to learn how to identify birds by ear. Petersen discusses how using recorded bird songs on tapes or CDs can help you to improve your auditory ability to recognize birds by their songs, calls, and mechanical noises they make, such as the sound of wings and feathers ruffling or a Woodpecker drilling into the side of a tree. Once you become more familiar with common vocalizations you'll soon be able to remember and pick out more complex songs, such as that of the Hermit Thrush, or even more challenging, the Mockingbird, who's song can mimic that of any other bird, or even the mechanical sounds it might hear in its environment. With a little practice and study, you'll be able to identify numerous bird species in your area without ever seeing them.

Video Transcript

"Hello, welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, we're going to be talking about birding by ear. The sounds that birds produce are things that many of us enjoy and sort of learned to love. But in order to remember and utilize bird songs as an aid to feel the identification, there are really three components that are important. First of all you have to be able to hear the birds, which means that you have to have decent hearing. Some people have problems at one end or the other, in terms of song pitch and at one end or another they don't register very high or low pitch sound. So obviously if you have a hearing problem, that's going to limit to a certain extent your ability to use bird song as a way of identifying birds. Other people have great hearing but they may have difficulty discriminating between similar sounds, so that auditory discrimination is something that can be problematical. But fortunately it can be worked upon and overcome with practice and finally there's auditory memory and this is the ability to hold a sound over long periods of time. So that if you encounter the same bird song at distance intervals, you'll recognize it for what it is. So to recap, having decent hearing that allows you to hear the sounds in the first place. Secondly the ability to discriminate between similar sounds and third the ability to remember sounds over time are all three things that collectively work to make birding by ear something that be a very enjoyable past time but may require some practice."