Spring Preps

Singing male Canada Warbler from Wiki Commons

Soo, I'm currently making my own spring preparations. If I don't, I'd go cuckoo and end up in a birding emergency room  "T-The songs. S-s-so m-m-many sss-s-songs I-I can-n-ot  I-IDENTIFF-FY!!!". Or, maybe I'll scamper crazily across the woodland, trying to catch a glimpse of the mystery singer that hides in the foliage, eventually getting kidnapped or ending up with a serious case of "warbler's neck"*.

To avoid such events, which are real possibilities for birders, I am making my own preparations for the Springtime. Yep--learning birdsongs.

I have been going steadily, step by step. One warm day, the loud, whistled and varied song of the cardinal, another the fee-bee-fee-bay of the Carolina chickadee. The peter-peter-peter and here-here-here! of the Tufted titmouse. I was trying to learn them all, steadily, but I knew that I would have to get a quicker method to learn many bird songs at once. Then came the trip to the library...

After drooling for a long time on nature books 'til my brains hurt, the library began to close. We hurried to check out whatever books we wanted, and as I hurried to the check-out something caught my eye. Why, it was Peterson's Eastern and Central North America Birding By Ear. Just what I needed!

I quickly snatched it from its shelf and was able to check out my books and the CD just in time, leaving the library with that feeling you get when you notice that today they DID have that delicious blueberry cheesecake   you always dream about in the lunch counter. Yum.

A couple of days later I began my self-tutoring.  I reviewed each of the 86 species shown on CD, and am still doing so. This way, I will be able to enjoy the beautiful songs a whole lot more when knowing what is making the sound.

The only drawback is that the CD shows only common Eastern birds, and you can't expect that every single bird you encounter will  be one regarded as "common". Thus I will be making my very own bird song recompilation. I'll lump every single Eastern bird in a Word document with a link to its song and call (whom I will get from the Macaulay Library) and try to learn as many as I can (specializing on birds I'm most likely to see around where I live).

Well, that's pretty much it. Wish me luck!