Ben,
The problem with learning bird calls (or insect, frog, etc) calls is that i=
t
is a very personal thing. By that, I mean that what I "hear" in a
particular bird's call may be very different than what you "hear". I have
had to do this with amphibian calls for various areas and realized pretty
quickly that descriptions in books or online that other people write just
don't make sense to me. Now that I am very familiar with the calls of the
frogs in my area, I'm always surprised by other people's descriptions of
them.
That said, the Peterson CD series "Birding by Ear" are supposed to be prett=
y
useful as a framework to get you started. I don't own them, but have had
them recommended by other birders.
If I wanted to set about to learn bird calls, I would start off by finding
out what the 20 or 30 most common species in my area/yard/nearby park were.
A local Audubon society or ebird.org would be great sources for that
information if you don't already know the local avifauna. Then I would
listen to their a variety of recordings of their calls and figure out my ow=
n
personal description of what they sound like. Then test yourself by gettin=
g
outside. It won't take long to learn the commonest stuff. Then when you
hear something you don't know, you can research it, figure out what it was
and add it to you known list. Carrying a little pocket recorder would be
helpful here. I think this way is the most effective way of learning calls=
.
A couple of very useful resources would be Cornell's All About Birds websit=
e
(www.allaboutbirds.org) which has recordings of most species (assuming you
are in North America ?) or the wonderful xeno-canto.org website with
recordings from all over the world including sonograms. The xeno-canto
recordings are creative commons licenses so you could download them and mak=
e
your own personal playlists to help you learn just the species that occur
around you.
The real key is to personalize it. Just because someone else tells you a
bird sounds like it is saying "Who-cooks-for-you" doesn't help if that isn'=
t
what you hear in the call. You need to make up your own personal tools.
Good luck. It is an intimidating task from the outset, but it is doable. =
I
know a lot of folks who know a lot of their local bird calls.
Chris Harrison
San Antonio, TX
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