Product Description

This Audio CD is designed for anyone who wants to learn how to recognize bird songs. It features the sounds of 189 different bird species found in the Midwest and Northeast States.

Each bird song recording is followed by a short description of the sound along with a common mnemonic used to remember it. Many well-known song mnemonics such as "Who cooks for you?" for the Barred Owl and "Poor Sam Peabody" for the White-throated Sparrow are included. Following the song and mnemonic, the source of the sound is revealed. By naming the bird at the end of each track, the listener is allowed to wonder and guess at the nature of the sound. Active listening, similar to what one experiences in the field while searching for an unknown bird song, is a key to engaging the memory process.

One way to use this CD is to enable the "Random Play" or "Shuffle" option on a home CD player, portable stereo, or personal computer. Although it may be frustrating at first, repetition of this "quiz" game will quickly improve recognition skills. Gaining familiarity with these songs will greatly increase any bird watcher's enjoyment and awareness of birds in their natural habitat.

Features:

- 189 bird species found in the Midwest and Northeast states
- Digital bird song recordings made in Wisconsin
- Brief narration after each song includes descriptive, memorable and often funny mnemonics
- Can be used as a field guide to learn and identify songs or as a recognition quiz game
- Easy to use alphabetical track listing of all birds and their mnemonics
- It is a great gift for any birdwatcher, beginner or advanced.
- Total running time: 60 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #320942 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Released on: 2006-01-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Binding: Audio CD
• 3 pages

Review
A unique and impressive CD audiobook providing instructions on how to recognize songs of birds. -- Midwest Book Review, March 2003

Excellent idea! Having had a chance to hear it, I'm as impressed as I thought I'd be. -- Fatbirder, December 4, 2002

The best format I've seen yet for learning birdsongs...the most fun of any songstudy CD I've used. -- Diane Porter, Birdwatching.com, November 17, 2002

Customer Reviews

Not For Beginner Birders Who Want to Learn Calls
There are many confusing elements to this disk and almost nothing positive I can say as a semi-beginning birder who wants to identify birds by their calls.
The first major fault is that the bird call comes first and then is followed by an incredibly brief supposed mnemonic device for learning the call. Is the bird call then repeated in a way that would mimic the supposed English language interpretation of the call? No!!
Next, two similar bird calls are compared with each other in each section. I want to learn individual calls and the thought of learning similar but slightly different calls, is mind boggling.
At best, this disk is only for the sophisticated birder (who would BTW be turned off by the supposed English language interpretation of the call) and in no way is helpful for the beginning birder.
I feel cheated that I wasted my money on this. If I could have listened to part of this first, as you can with audio CDs of songs, I would NEVER have bought it.

The CD is very useful
I love your CD. I have been using it to great effect on the commuter train from Ipswich to Boston every day for the last few weeks. I live about an hour north of Boston and read the newspaper until about Salem or Swampscott. Then it's birds the rest of the trip. I am a graduate of "Birding by Ear" and "More Birding by Ear" so I love the fact that on your CD the songs come first, followed by the identifications. I generally have my CD player set on random shuffle.

I understand that the songs can be heard faintly by the other commuters, though they can't tell where the sound is coming from. I see people looking around from time to time wondering who let the birds on the train. It's quite funny.

Really great guide, especially for beginners
I'm an ornithologist, and yet I have a hard time learning bird songs. I got this CD as a way to learn them, and found it very useful. It doesn't have all the birds of the Eastern US, but that's helpful because it keeps you from being overwhelmed. Birds are grouped partly by habitat which is also helpful. On some of the tracks, it is hard to tell which is the target bird, and only the main song of the bird is featured. However, the bird isn't identified until after the song is played, allowing you time to figure it out for yourself. The pneumonics for making the abstract noises easy to remember help a lot. I'd recommend this guide to anyone starting to learn bird songs.