Peggi, in my opinion bird song tapes or CDs are definitely worth the money,
despite numerous frustrations in using them. For my area, or an area I am
planning to visit, I extract just the songs I want to learn and transfer them to
another tape (my tape deck has 2 stations). Comes out rather choppy but beats
winding through miles of songs you don't need to confuse yourself with.

Just recently I finally got a CD player, a Discman, and the Peterson's Western
Birds CDs. Much better. Although there are 5-6 songs per track, getting to the
one I want is much faster than on tape and the acoustic quality is much better.

There remains the problem of local dialect, quality of original recording and
end-user playback, idiosyncracies of individual singers. It seems to me that a
taped bird song has some of the same shortcomings - if you use it for ID - as a
photograph of a bird (which is why most bird guides use illustrations instead).

My sister taught herself eastern bird songs quite rapidly using "Birding by Ear"
tapes. Instead of running a series of cheeps and tweets past you in taxonomic
order, these tapes compare similar songs and point out how to distinguish
between them. For only a select few birds, however. Still, learning the
technique is valuable.

A well-learned song is worth ten fleeting glimpses in identifying a bird. But
recordings will not always get you there. Best way is to go birding with a
knowledgeable by-ear birder during the height of the breeding season.

Chris Maack
Anchorage, AK
73201.3124 at compuserve.com