Bird Song Identification

Bird song identification can be overwhelming, especially when you're a beginner. But there are plenty of audio resources out there to help you learn songs much easier.

Our personal favorite is the "Birding By Ear" CD series. It groups bird songs by similarity such as sing-songers like robins, tanagers and vireos or trillers like chipping sparrows and juncos. I used the Western version when I moved out west and needed to learn songs for a job doing bird counts.

They have a Western and Eastern/Central version. It's easy to find each bird's song on the CD because the booklet tells you exactly where it is, for example:

Swainson's Thrush: Disk 2: track 9: time 1:45. The booklet also gives habitat and voice descriptions for each bird.

Our Favorite Bird Song Identification CDs

Western Songs	Eastern Songs

A review from a birder at Amazon:

Excellent Teaching Style

By	Nature Lover (Brooksville, FL)

"The narrator discusses each bird's song and/or call, telling you specific things to listen for, including comparisons to similar calls. Then the song/call is played. The narrator finally reviews what you heard, pointing out similarities and differences again, as well as noting peculiarities. I found this to be a very simple to follow format, and one which helped me to remember the songs/calls of each bird better than similar CD's which just give the name of the bird & then let you hear the song/call. A booklet is included for review as well."

It's nice to have the songs with you when you're in the field trying to identify a bird, so you can either carry a portable CD player or transfer the songs over to a mp3 player, like an iPod.

You can listen for free to some common U.S. and Canadian bird songs from the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. They are, however, only snippets of each bird's song and are not as complete as getting a bird song cd such as the ones listed above.

The latest development in bird song identification audio tools is the birdJam bird song identification software program for ipods. Follow the above or below link for more information.