Mark,

An afterthought to my first response: If you can pick up an
inexpensive sound recorder, you can then record the calls you're
unsure of, while in the wild, and check your hunches later. Many
digital cameras will record with adequate fidelity to allow later
identification. And there are several devices under $200 (I-River,
for instance) that would be better for that purpose, though you won't
get CD quality from anything in that price range, just audio good
enough for ID purposes.

Marc

Marc Hoffman
Kirkland, WA
http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/portfolio
mailto:tweeters at dartfrogmedia.com



At 05:10 PM 8/28/2006, Regan Wensnahan wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>As a fairly new bird watcher, I have decided that it is time for me
>to take time to learn some bird songs. The problem of course is which ones?
>
>I have the Stokes CDs and took the time to make a CD of the subset
>of "common" Seattle birds. This trimmed the list from ~500 to ~90.
>This list is still too long to seem like a good starting point. I'd
>like to trim things to perhaps 20-30 that I would try to memorize
>and perhaps another 30 that I would listen to occasionally for
>familiarity. It seems like the place to start is with common birds
>that sing regularly, i.e. those birds I am likely to hear. It also
>seems to make sense to focus on birds that I amlikely to hear but
>not see or be able to identify easily otherwise.
>
>So, I was hoping that you folks could give me some recommendations.
>Where do I start?
>
>Thanks, Mark