The sound player is like most others you will have seen. Simply click the arrow to play continuously, click pause to stop it. All the sounds are good quality MP3 files which sound best through headphones.

And a note that descends like the call of a Bullfinch like this:

When Great Tit sings its basic up and down song it is like this:

Finally a really harsh call like the Willow Tit is simply a series of horizontal bars marking the harmonics:

Listening to Birds

Sound is an important tool for communication in the life of a bird. It is also useful for the birdwatcher whose attention gets drawn by the sound a bird makes and it can be a distinct help in identifying the species.

The fact that certain bird sounds are attractive to the human ear and others less attractive has led to lots of confusion. The longer, complex, attractive sounds that are perceived as “melodious” get called “songs”. The short, harsh, unattractive sounds that are perceived as “noisy”are termed “calls”. But this is all human fantasy, to the birds they are all simply “vocalisations” to convey a wide variety of information. There is no clear dividing line between “song” and “calls”, but this terminology has entered such common usage that all bird books (including this web book) fall into the trap, and so the myth is perpetuated.

To be fair, the more complex “musical” vocalisations are generally (but not exclusively) the ones used to establish territories or attract a mate, often sung from an exposed perch and broadcast widely. The shorter harsher ones often are used to deter a competitor, or warn of dangers, or to simply keep contact with a mate or offspring. So, the “songs” and “calls” labels do have a certain utility, even if their biological accuracy is rather loose in many circumstances. I use them both unashamedly in the species accounts!

Converting a bird vocalisation into a spectrogram (see above) can be a boost to learning bird sounds – it allows you to see and hear the sound at the same time. For most people this and helps to remember sound when you are out in the open. For this reason, all the pages in this site contain spectrograms of key sounds.

Another aid to memorising sounds is to invent a word or phrase to match the sound, so that it sticks in your mind – “cuck-koo” is probably the best known. But this is fraught with pitfalls as there is no standard, and some words can be almost meaningless – “tee-tee-tee” or “chew-chew” can mean different things to different people – and do any of them sound like the bird? Are “pew” and “pui” different sounds? And does any of this translate across different languages? Most bird guides use such words to try and convey a particular sound. I have largely tried to avoid their use here but, again, they serve a purpose sometimes, so they do creep into my text.

Learning bird sounds is not easy but can be done if you know what questions to ask, here are a few ideas:

Pitch: is the sound made of high notes (Goldcrest, Firecrest, Treecreepers) or low notes (Woodpigeon, Stock Dove, most Owls).  Is it switching between the two in some consistent pattern (Great Tit, Cuckoo, Chiff Chaff)? (NB: pitch is the same as frequency on the vertical axis of a sonogram)

Rhythm: does the sound contain a continuous stream of notes (Blackcap, Nightingale), or is there a pattern that repeats (Song Thrush, Ring Ouzel)?  Could you mark the pattern like a drum-beat (Wood Warbler)?

Timbre: finally, there is a particular characteristic to sounds that marks them for what they are. It is all wrapped up in what is called “psycho-acoustics”i.e. how our brain perceives a note. One definition of timbre is “tone colour or tone quality”. If you take the musical note “middle C” and play it on a piano, guitar, or violin, you can identify the instrument immediately: the individual resonance, harmonics, size, all give the note identifiable character. It is the same with a bird note, there is a certain indescribable characteristics that contribute to the identification.

Wrap all this together and you get what bird sound researchers often refer to as “structure” – that combination of characters that enable identification of the species making the sound.

As a final word: in the species accounts I pick out those sounds that I find are most characteristic of a species. But within a species not every individual makes exactly the same sounds. If they all sound pretty much the same to you it is because human hearing sensitivity is far inferior to that of a bird. Members of the same species can get much more information from hearing a vocalisation than we can (see Savi’s Warbler or Wren for example). So much about bird vocalisations involves individual recognition – is that my mate? Is it my friendly neighbour that I can relax about? Is it a new intruder that I must chase away? So, you will find occasional differences in your personal experience to the samples I provide in these pages. I do occasionally discuss variations for a species, but mostly I pick out the broad themes that will ease your understanding of what is going on.

A lot more could be said about this, but it is not for here. If you would like to dig deeper check out the References and Further Reading section and in particular the works by Catchpole & Slater (2008), Constantine etal (2006), Kroodsma (2005 and 2020), and Marler & Slaberkoorn (2004).

But don’t let the complications bog you down, simply go out and listen - early mornings in spring are by far the best time - you will be treated to a wild symphony of amazing richness that you can bathe in for free !!