Bird song identifier
Nothing lifts the spirits in the morning more than the British dawn chorus. Think of it as caffeine for the soul.
But wouldn't it be great to idenitfy 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
- 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 2-4 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.
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
- 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.
Dunnock
- 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
- 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
