Thread by @LevParikian

Hello twitter. Quick feeler: would you be interested in an ongoing thread over the next few weeks to help you identify birdsong as spring approaches? I’m thinking of doing something, basically for beginners. #birdsong

Ok I’m going to take this as a yes :-)

This might require some thought...

The first thing to say, for now, is that this thread will be limited to British birds. Sorry and all that to everyone from the 99.99% of the world that isn’t Britain.

Ok so it looks like some people are interested in birdsong huh

Hello to the very surprising number of new followers. You all seem nice enough. I’ll be starting this birdsong thing tomorrow morning. If you could all be at your desks with lapel badges and notebooks it’ll make my life a lot easier. Night night.

Morning everyone. Are we ready to learn about birdsong?

Look at you all with your shiny eager faces, ready to learn.

I’m going to get my excuses in early. Firstly, when I tweeted about this last night, I didn’t expect the torrent of interest that ensued. It’s obviously lovely and heartening and all that, but I must make it absolutely clear at the outset that I’m not really an ‘expert’.

If anything, I’m the guy who started the course six months before you and is a few chapters ahead of you and ready to show off what little he does know. Do your homework, and you’ll probably overtake me.

Yes, I have written a book about birds, but the whole point of that was the story of my rediscovery of them after a very lengthy time basically ignoring them.

Having said that, I have spent quite a long time listening, observing and learning in the last couple of years. So I reckon I might be able to help if you’re confused.
But equally I welcome corrections & additions from those with more experience and knowledge. Or anyone, really.

I’m really aiming this thread at people who don’t know much. People who have heard birdsong about the place, think they might know a few, but basically find it all terminally confusing. And the main goal is to get people going outside with their ears pricked, taking notice.

And it’s useful to have your ears pricked, because more often than not, and especially in spring, you’ll hear a bird before you see it.

One of the problems is that birdsong occupies, in human terms, quite a narrow aural niche. To put it in terms of musical instruments (I am a musician, after all): we could probably all tell the difference between the sound of a double bass and the sound of a violin.

But in birdsong there are no double basses. Not really. They’re all squeaking around in the higher reaches. They do all occupy different aural niches – that’s an evolutionary necessity – but our ears often struggle to differentiate them.

And they don’t, in general, play tunes we can hum or imitate easily.

Add to that the annoying facts that a lot of birds don’t just make one sound, and that they often all sing at the same time, and it quickly becomes a confusing mess.

But I’ll try to help you through that mess bit by bit. We’re going to take it one bird at a time. It’ll be slow progress, and often I’ll be as confused as you are, but the main thing is we’re going to do our best.

First, the geography. I live in south London. If you live somewhere else, you'll hear some of the same birds, but also some different ones. I’ll try to cover all that as we go along.

And I will be sharing some resources that have helped me. But I’m keen not to inundate you with information (this is already far too long for one day), so for today we’re going to start with the song of one bird: the robin. You know what a robin looks like, yes?

Its song consists of silvery, liquid flutings and ripplings, with (crucially) pauses in between. I tried to transcribe it using words once. I failed. Here's one.

Listen out for the pauses, usually no more than a few seconds between each phrase. And try to lodge the sound of the voice, its timbre and register, in your head – each phrase varies slightly. Sometimes it’s a thin ribbon, sometimes it bubbles out and away, almost out of control.

A resource I'll be pointing you towards a lot is @xenocanto. It's a fantastic database of birdsong. Here's the page for the robin. xeno-canto.org/species/Eritha…

It also has the much shorter calls (as opposed to song – we'll get into the difference on another occasion), but spend a few minutes listening to the samples marked 'song' on that page, and you'll hear how much they vary, but also how much they're the same.

The robin is one of the few birds to sing all year round. If you go outside for a walk right now you’ll hear one, likely as not. So what are you waiting for?

Before we disperse to do our homework, you'll remember I mentioned my book. It's called Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?, and I have an annotated copy to give away. The giveaway ends tomorrow. You can enter here. kingsumo.com/g/zu8lt4/annot…

Thanks all for indulging me with this exceptionally long thread. They'll be shorter from now on.

It turns out that if you want 1500 new followers overnight you just need to ask if people like birdsong. Who knew?

I just told my son. His response: ‘I get that people want to know about birdsong, but why do you they want to learn about it from YOU?’

Too damn perceptive for his own good, that boy.

Hello to all the new followers. If it’s the birds you’re after, you should find a robin further up this thread.

Morning all. It’s day two of the #TwitterBirdsong adventure.

Yes. I did a hashtag. I hope it might come in useful. For completeness, the next tweets will be yesterday’s robin songs plus hashtag.

The robin’s song consists of silvery, liquid flutings and ripplings, with (crucially) pauses in between. I tried to transcribe it using words once. I failed.
#TwitterBirdsong

Here’s a collection of many examples of robin song.
xeno-canto.org/species/Eritha… #TwitterBirdsong

Right. Today’s bird is a real treat. It has just about the most beautiful and uplifting song of any British bird (in my humble correctness). It is the blackbird.

Here’s a blackbird, should you be in any doubt about what you’re looking for.

And here’s an example of the blackbird's magnificent, mellow, mellifluous song.
#TwitterBirdsong

Here's another blackbird, for good measure. xeno-canto.org/359404 #TwitterBirdsong

Now it’s easy for me just to say ‘listen to this’ and trust you’ll pick it up straightaway. But if you’re new to it you might be asking ‘so how will I tell the difference between that and, say, the robin?’

Glad you asked. Go back to our robin from yesterday (he’s here: ) and we’ll hear shortish phrases with two- to three-second gaps. The phrases are mostly a similar length, as are the gaps.

Now listen again to the blackbird. The on-off pattern isn’t dissimilar, but the timbre is completely different. Where the robin is thin and piping, the blackbird is rich and mellow, as if it has a deeper throat.

It's also generally lower in pitch than the robin, and there are also a few squeaks and squawks thrown in, while the robin’s variations are more rippling and wispy.

So what we’re listening for is the quality of the bird’s voice, not necessarily what it’s saying. It’s like the way that you recognise your mate Phil’s voice, whether he’s saying ‘come to the pub’ or ‘my grandfather’s fish tank is full of loganberries’.

Some birds do repeat the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. They’re the pub bores of the bird world. But birds like the robin and the blackbird are the John Coltranes and Wynton Marsalises. You want to sit and listen all evening.

Dusk is a brilliant time to listen out for blackbirds. They’ll carry on for ages, singing their hearts out from the top of a tree. With any luck you’ll hear several giving it large at the same time.

Now, a word about how to listen. If you talk to 100 birders, you’ll get 100 different answers to the question ‘how do you learn?’ I can only tell you what worked for me. You’re different. You have different ears and a different brain. (You don’t know how lucky you are).

When I first started listening, I bought these cds and loaded them up on my phone. And I listened on walks and train journeys and so on. nhbs.com/british-bird-s…

It was extremely therapeutic, looking at my fellow commuters and knowing I was having a more relaxing time than them.

The cds are excellent, but the reason I’ve linked to @xenocanto is variety: listening to the same bird over and over again is great, but listening to a variety of different birds is even better.

It can be overwhelming to see so many examples, but, and I can’t stress this enough, to get good at this we’re going to have to listen to a lot of birdsong. Otherwise it just won’t stick.

Here's the @xenocanto page for the blackbird. You'll see there are loads of examples, and you'll also see a column marked 'type'. Look for the ones marked 'song'. xeno-canto.org/explore?query=…

Luckily, listening to birdsong is a healthy and therapeutic thing to do. (Unless the bird in question is a parakeet, in which case it’s hell.)

Here’s another resource someone suggested (I’m sorry, I can’t remember who it was – the interest in this has been overwhelming!) british-birdsongs.uk It might be more appealing to the beginner.

It’s very well organised, and gives examples of different types of noise: song, call, alarm call etc. We’ll get into those on another occasion.

Again, I strongly recommend listening as often as possible to recordings, until your ears and brain recognise the timbre of the voice instinctively. Trying to learn too many at once will confuse you. Be patient with yourself. It takes time and effort but is extremely rewarding.

Have a great day and don't forget to do your homework. Now, who's going to help me clear up this mess?

Oh, I forgot to say, the giveaway of my annotated copy of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? finishes at 5 this afternoon. kingsumo.com/g/zu8lt4/annot…

When you enter the giveaway, you do (as I'm sure you'll be aware) get put on a mailing list. I send out a monthly email with a selection of videos I find entertaining/amusing/whatever.

You can of course unsubscribe at any time, but I've found most people stick around. So why not enter the giveaway? You have little to lose and everything* to gain.

*A book with lunatic pencil scribblings in it.