Bird song identifier
Nothing lifts the spirits in the morning more than the dawn chorus. Think of it as caffeine for the soul.
But wouldn't it be great to identify a bird just from its song alone? To help, we've created a bird song ID playlist with some of the common birds you'll find in and around your garden or local area.
House Sparrow
- Length of verse: can go on for several minutes.
- The simplest of birdsongs, just a series of cheeps and chirps, one at a time, hardly sophisticated but quite enthusiastic in its own way.
Starling
- Length of verse: sometimes a minute or more.
- A rather quiet and very odd song, lots of beeps and clicks, mixed with long sliding whistles, and maybe the sound of a duck or a lapwing or anything else it has heard that day! Inventive, rather electronic, this is experimental music rather than nice melodies.
Blue tit
Blue tit call
- Length of verse: 2–3 secs
- Typically sings ‘sispi si-hi-hi-hi-hi’, the first notes higher in pitch than the longer closing shimmer.
Woodpigeon
- Length of verse: 6–10 secs
- A low, lowing five-note phrase, repeated two to four times each verse, to the rhythm of ‘I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go’.
Blackbird
- Length of verse: 2–3 secs
- Each verse is different, but all in a rich, fluty, warm baritone. The pacing is relaxed, and more often than not he finishes each verse with a little squeaky twiddle.
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Goldfinch
- Length of verse: 4–12 secs
- Fast, tinkling long verses with little apparent structure, interspersed with its call note ‘tickle-it’.
Great tit
- Length of verse: 3–6 secs
- Famously rendered as ‘teacher teacher teacher’, seesawing between two notes of different pitch. There are many variations, but the ringing tone and seesawing is typical.
Robin
- Length of verse: 2–4 secs
- Each verse is different, but the theme is watery, all gurgles and trickles, with slow, long notes followed by a gush. Think of a stream, with still pools and then little cascades.
Long-tailed tit
- Rarely sings, and only quietly when squabbling, so instead listen in particular for the contact calls that members of a flock use to stay in touch with each other. The sound where they are getting a bit anxious is the most obvious, a rippling ‘sirrut’.
Magpie
- Rarely sings, and when it does it's very quiet, so instead listen for either the ‘ker-chok!’ conversational call, or the harsh dry rattle when it gets a bit miffed about something, sounding like giant matches being shaken in a box – ‘schak-ak-ak-ak-ak’
Chaffinch
Chaffinch call
Patrick Eberg, Xeno-Canto
- Length of verse: 2–3 secs
- A bright short jig of a verse, about 10 notes dropping down the scale and finishing with a theatrical flourish. It then repeats it exactly a few seconds later, and so on…
Greenfinch
- Length of verse: 6–15 secs
- A lively sequence of trills of different speeds, such as ‘dibbi-dibbi-dib’, ‘ju-ju-ju-ju-ju’, interspersed with a nasal ‘dweeeeez’.
Song thrush
- Length of verse: 1–2 secs
- Loud, confident, but it is the ‘repeat and move on’ structure that is so different from any other common bird, singing a note or very short phrase, repeating it once, twice or maybe three times, and then on to a completely different phrase.
Dunnock
Dunnock call
- Length of verse: 3–4 secs
- Quite a long verse, a fast, squeaky ditty without pause or change in pace.
Wren
- Length of verse: 4–6 secs
- Superfast outburst, packing in 100 notes or more, linking together several mini trills including a dry rattle with the speed of a mini machine gun.
Coal tit
Coal tit call
- Length of verse: 3–6 secs
- The squeaky little cousin of the great tit, singing a seesawing ‘wee-gee wee-gee’ from conifer trees in a higher baby-voice pitch.
Blackcap
- Length of verse: 3–6 secs
- Perhaps the sweetest of all garden bird songs in leafier gardens, quite a long verse that typically starts hesitantly, but half way through he finds his confidence to let rip with pure fluty melody.
Chiffchaff
- Length of verse: 3–12 secs
- Sings its name, a metronomic mix of staccato chiffs, chaffs and choffs in random order.
Collared dove
- Length of verse: 10-20 secs
- Lethargic repetition of ‘cu-COO-coo’, to the rhythm of a bored ‘u-NI-ted, u-NI-ted’
Guide to birdsong
RSPB Guide to Birdsong by Adrian Thomas covers all the common birds in the UK and includes a fully narrated CD covering 70 different species
