How do you learn it?

The key to converting birdsong to a more amenable human learning process is to use words. (At least on the introductory level: the real bird nerds who need to distinguish very similar calls eventually dive into the fascinating world of sonograms.) Most of us humans do not naturally deal well with remembering abstract sounds. Or images really. One of the most common mistakes of beginning birdwatchers is to see a bird, then rush to flip through the book to look for a matching picture, then to be confused when confronted with a few similar-looking possibilities. The key is to note as many specific features as possible, in words: Black head, reddish sides, white belly. A black tail, but white outer tail feathers. And so on.

Have you ever made that mistake when trying to identify a new bird you’ve seen? Stop doing that. And don’t do it with songs, hearing a new sound and then trying to identify it based on a cloudy general impression or a single adjective of loose description. We need more precision.

USE WORDS

In the case of sounds, we have three different ways of converting songs into material our language-trained brains can handle and remember. These three tools are mnemonics, transliteration, and description. Let me give you an example of each with an easy and distinctive song, that of the golden-crowned sparrow. This is a very common winter bird here, which arrives in late September or early October and sings this song when most of our residents have grown quiet.

(To replay the main song at the beginning, click the stop button, then the play button)

Mnemonics: These memory devices work by combining an appropriate meaning from human language with a general imitation of the sound in question. The golden-crown song has three syllables and sound rather tired and wistful, so one common mnemonic is “I’m so tired.” Other options include “Oh dear me” and “no gold here” (the last popular with despondent Yukon gold miners).

Transliteration: Unlike mnemonics, transliterations don’t attempt use actual English words. Instead they use our alphabet to imitate the sounds as closely as possible. For the gold-crown, you might get something like “seeea seeeew soooo.” Here, the three words capture the three notes of the song, the “s”s capture the slurred and whistled quality, the repeated vowels imitated the long and drawn-out notes, and the switch from “e” sounds to the final “oo” sound mirrors the drop in pitch.

Description: This classically musical song might be described as “three clear, long, high whistles, slurring together and descending in pitch.” Some songs can be easily described like this in their tempo (fast or slow), pitch (high, low, descending, ascending), tone (whistled, buzzy, raspy, muffled), and other musical qualities, while others might be best described by everyday adjectives or analogy (the California towhee call sounds to some like a “low battery alert on a smoke detector).

Listen to that golden-crowned sparrow song a few times, thinking of whichever one of those wordification techniques feels most natural to you. Take this approach with any birdsong you want to remember: read mnemonics, transliterations, or descriptions on websites or in field guides and think of them while listening to the sound. Find something that works in your mind, that feels both accurately and precisely descriptive of that particular sound to your ears.

The Morse Code Technique

When dealing with long and complex songs, I have one other technique that often seems to help beginners. I call it the “Morse code” technique, inspired by a related anecdote in Donald Kroodsma’s book The Singing Life of Birds. Apparently, when radio operators are learning Morse code, they are encouraged not to attempt to slow down communications and pick out every single letter, but instead to listen to recordings at full speed and focus on picking out just a few letters. You can apply this to complex bird songs by focusing on a specific and distinctive element within the song, such as the staccato ending notes at the end of the Bewick’s Wren song or the “po-ta-to-chip” calls that American goldfinches are always making.

For example, listen first to this simple Bewick’s wren song and then a more complex version. You might be confused by the extra material in the second song, but listen for that distinctive tag of repeated, staccato notes at the end: if you recognize that bit, you will know who is singing.