Our quest for bird knowledge continues! In the past few weeks, we have been listening to and practicing identifying different birds’ songs. This is an important skill for us to learn so that we can help identify the birds on our bioacoustic recordings this spring. There’s a really cool online tool that was developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called “All About Bird Song,” and we’ve used it to learn more about birds and their songs and practice identifying songs of different species. There was a section in the course named “Bird Song Hero”- yes, you read that right. Surprisingly we have been doing pretty well!
It is fascinating to see the progress that we have made, because we are already able to identify some birds’ songs with just a few weeks of practice. One thing that we found really interesting (which may be obvious, but we just never really put much thought into it) is that birds practice their songs in order to get the sound just right. Songbirds listen to “tutors” so they can master their perfect song.
We find that listening to these different birds songs and calls has given us a whole new appreciation and awareness for a part of nature that we never paid much attention to before. As Gabby said, “Birds aren’t really just background noise to me that I tune out anymore. Pretty much everywhere I go now, I’ll pause to listen and try to figure out which birds are singing. In fact, Olivia and I are always texting each other saying how we’re both always trying to ID birds now.”
When you begin listening to the birds, you start to realize that there are in fact different species of birds all around us. Next time you are out and about, try to listen to the different types of bird songs around you. You may be surprised by the many different types of songs you will hear!