This is a short Tutorial about how to recognize birds by their songs, also known in bird watching speak, as their calls. Many of you have written in asking about how to do this and here’s one of those very letters we picked at random.

“Dear Mr. Director, I’ve heard birds making noises and wondered if that was how they communicated. Can you tell what kind of birds they are by their songs and if so, how? Sincerely, Deaf As A Post in East Umbridge, Wales”.

“Dear Deaf As A Post, First how the hell did you find me from Wales? Second, how is it that you can use ‘communicated’ in a sentence but you haven’t figured out that birds use songs to ‘ communicate’ with each other? I thought English people, or in your case Welsh people, were smart. Wasn’t Richard Burton from there? He’s smart. At least he was until he married Elizabeth Taylor twice. And thirdly, if you’re ‘Deaf As A Post’ how do you  know birds are even making noises? I mean, Why does it even matter? You leave a lot of unanswered questions.

“But to answer the question so the rest of the hearing public can get up to speed on bird songs and how to recognize them, it ‘s quite simple really. Each and every bird alive today has their own unique song that they sing to announce their presence to the other birds in the area, or to contact babes, or to just let the other birds know how freaking cool they are.

“For example this particular birds’ song is “OH Happy Day” so whenever you hear it you should immediately look around for this bird, the one in the picture above. It will probably be on the shoreline out in the open, where it can jump up and down and really get into it, I mean really belt it out. Once you learn the words to it, the song I mean, it’s like OH Happy Day over and over, you can always recognize this bird. If you hear a chorus singing in the background that means that there are more of them and you should look around some more. Sometimes they hide in the bushes. The deeper voices, the ones just steeped in bass, are the males and of course the high voices soaring over head will be the females.

 If you are sonically challenged or don’t have an iPod here’s a link so you can hear how this song sounds.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb7D-W-QW-8 copy and paste it into your browser and learn your first bird song. It is Aretha Franklin and Ms. Mavis Staples mimicking this bird’s song in their own voices. They sound amazingly like the bird so you should have no problem recognizing it when you hear it in the wild. Many of the top entertainers in the music world have taken bird calls verbatim and made huge hits out of them. For instance much of Gordon Lightfoot’s music was copied from the Buzzard family. And Jimmy Buffett has made a good living from repeating various Parrot and Cockatiel songs. And Country and Western has borrowed liberally from the Warblers. As far as I know there have been no royalties paid to any of these birds for the use of their songs, and that is disturbing, but it is a problem for another day.

That should answer your question, Mr. Deaf As A Post, from East Umbridge, Wales, although a fat lot of good it will do you and don’t be using a fake disability to line jump so you get your questions answered first, that’s as bad as parking in the handicapped space when you’re a marathon runner. Shame on you.

Sincerely, The Director.”

To our other readers who we like a lot better than Mr. Deaf As A Post, ( that guy  just rubbed us the wrong way), there are many birds in Nature, like over 30 or so, and each has its very own song. We have only presented one today because that is a lot to absorb all at once, but we’ll eventually get to them all. So stay tuned and remember, birds are singing for you and for me. Lets listen.