Western Birding by Ear

Peterson Field Guides #41

by Richard K. Walton, Robert W. Lawson

Birding by Ear: Western is a unique and important new tool for birders. Now they can master one of the most useful and difficult field skills - the ability to recognize birds by their songs and calls. Birding By Ear: Western points out exactly what to listen for to tell one bird from another. As the Peterson Field Guide groups birds by visual similarity, Birding by Ear: Western groups them by acoustic similarity. Dick Walton and Bob Lawson have arranged ninety-one common species into nineteen intelligible learning groups - "sing-songers," "trillers," "name-sayers," "warbling songsters," and many others. The entertaining and educational narrative does the same job as the arrows in the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, pinpointing the precise differences between similar species. The songs themselves are recorded to the highest acoustic standards and are a delight to listen to.
Birding by Ear: Western can enable anyone to become a better birder. Use it in conjunction with the Peterson Field Guide to Western Bird Songs, which provides a thorough catalog of the songs and calls of the familiar birds of western North America. Birding by Ear: Western may well become as essential to you as your Field Guide and binoculars.

Genres: Birds, Ornithology, Science

64 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Anna Nesterovich · Rating 2 out of 5]

As I often do with American birdwatching resources, I found this lacking. A lot. I'm not sure I picked up this recording to learn how to distinguish between a chickadee and Bluejay. I would be much more interested to learn how to distinguish by sound alone between, say, Mountain Chickadee and Boreal Chickadee. There are too few examples in this collection and almost no examples at all of similar, hard to differentiate species. Business as usual.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great recording to listen to and re-listen to very often. It is an excellent review of many bird songs with mnemonic devices that help birders remember tricks with commonly-heard species. My only complaint is that this recording is not quite limited enough geographically, but that is easily compensated for.