Listening to Birdsong
- SGW
- Jul 13
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 18
If you live in Great Britain or Ireland and you enjoy listening to birdsong, you might want to add these CDs to your collection. Although there’s an all-too-familiar British emphasis here (and English too), anyone who lives in Ireland will recognise many of the birds in these recordings.
Two of these presentations are also available through Audible. But as is the case with so much on Amazon, you won’t actually own what you buy. Like me you may prefer to collect used CDs instead. Including postage, the four CDs above cost me just £22.
If you have the time and equipment you could then use audio software such as Acon Digital’s Acoustica to make a compilation of your favourite birdsong. I’ve done that myself and then installed clips on my phone for unique notifications. But not everyone is an anorak like me.
I'm not into bird-watching but certainly their behaviour can be fascinating. I remember seeing a small bird fluttering up and down a window. Suddenly it dropped onto the windowsill as if it had been shot, rolled off the edge, dropped several feet like a stone then flew back up and started all over again. It may have needed therapy, unlike the magpie with refined eating habits that occasionally visited my birdbath. He dipped a piece of bread in the water before eating it.
Birds can fight viciously. I once saw two robins rolling about in a fierce contest. But that was nothing compared to the deadly clash I came on one day while out driving. On the road ahead two pigeons were savagely at each other's throats, literally. Before I could get to them one had plunged its beak deep into the other's neck and flown away. The wounded bird bled profusely and died quite quickly. There is ugly drama all around us.
So, all things considered I much prefer to listen to them! Years ago I bought a small Sony digital voice recorder for just over £40. I added a foam windscreen held on with an elastic band, and early one windy spring morning hiked to abandoned quarries near my home to record the birdsong.
I simply set the recorder in the lower branches of trees and bushes and hoped for the best. Down on the quarry floor the wind high above wasn’t a problem. I was very pleased with the lossless results—definitely not professional, but enjoyable nonetheless. Have a listen.
