Songs and Voices

On the screen there are nine picture buttons. Using the mouse, position the cursor over one of the photos. ( The title of that choice will appear in the gray bar near the bottom of the screen ). Click the primary mouse button to select it.

Choices

The Common Birds that Sing

Types of Bird Songs

Sings its Name

Familiar Birds

Songs with Words

Musical Songs

Screams

Croaks and Squawks

The Birds in Chorus

Other Buttons

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The Common Birds that Sing

Learn to tell more than 120 common birds apart by their Songs, Photos and Ranges.

This topic contains all of the birds in this CD-ROM. Challenge yourself to learn them by their Song, or their Photo or Range. See if given a Habitat, you can use the Multiple Answers option and identify all the birds that live there.

Use Incremental Learning to work with them in small groups, then increase the size of the learning set. Save your own Subsets of these birds, to focus your learning in areas of special interest or difficulty.


Types of Bird Songs

Here are some convenient ways to group bird songs.

This topic is an easy introduction to bird songs. See if you can quickly place a bird song into one of six convenient groups:

Sings its Name

Familiar Birds

Songs with Words

Musical Songs

Screams

Croaks and Squawks

These groups are representative samples of the birds in this CD-ROM. You can create your own such group from The Common Birds that Sing topic, using the Subset feature.


Sings its Name

Here are birds that sing their name. These should be easy.

Birding by ear often starts here: with the Whip-poor-will, Killdeer or Eastern Phoebe. These are some of the common birds whose names are strikingly similar to their songs.

Compare these birds by their Songs, Photos, SongWaves, Ranges and Habitats. Challenge yourself to identify them by Song alone or by Photo alone. Progress to identification by Range. Find out using the Timer how little of a Song you actually need to hear when you really know it well.


Familiar Birds

Some bird songs are so common that they fade into the background.  Listen again.

If you think that you know the Canada Goose, American Robin, Mallard, Red-winged Blackbird pretty well, challenge yourself to identify them with just 0.1 sec of Song or Photo. See if you know them by their Ranges.


Songs with Words

Learn the different bird songs for which we have created commonly known words.

Here are some birds whose Songs have been given well-known phrases, such as the Ovenbird with "Teacher, teacher, teacher" or the White-throated Sparrow and its "O Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada". Use the Text button to read what the birds are singing.

Compare their Songs, Photos, SongWaves, Ranges and Habitats. See if you can identify the bird by Song alone, and progress to recognizing the bird by its Range.


Musical Songs

Learn to tell apart the birds whose songs have obvious melody and beauty to most of us.

Many of these bird songs represent the very spirit of the wilderness, evoking the memory of northern lakes, dark cool woods or open fields. These include the Common Loon, the Hermit Thrush and the Eastern Meadowlark.

Challenge yourself by turning the Timer on and identifying the song by hearing just a small phrase.


Screams

Learn that birds which scream actually sound quite different when you compare them.

Axia allows you to identify the most subtle differences between things that seem to be similar until you really pay attention to them. This topic includes selected common gulls and hawks.

Compare two gulls in terms of their Songs and SongWaves: play one, then the other repeatedly and you can soon become a foster parent to a gull. Use Challenge Mode to accelerate your discrimination skills.


Croaks and Squawks

Learn to distinguish the birds that squawk. Their mothers can.

The less than beautiful songs of the American Crow, Great Blue Heron, European Starling and Pied-billed Grebe will be easy pickings for you.

Through Axia's Comparison and Challenge, see how quickly you can tell these birds apart by Song, by Photo and even by Range.


The Birds in Chorus

Learn to identify the birds in chorus and amaze your friends. You are an expert.

This topic has over 50 Choruses of bird songs, covering more than 100 species of birds. Use Challenge Mode and Multiple Answers, and identify the birds in each Chorus. Now turn on the Timer and restrict yourself to no more than 2 seconds of bird Chorus. Good ear!