I have a 'tin ear' and struggled mightily to learn bird songs until this spring. I picked up a BirdPod. It is an iPod with the Stokes CDs loaded, all the spoken words removed, and organized three ways. You can look-up the bird by habitat, alphabetically, and in checklist order. You can get to any bird in a handful of seconds.

I would sit in the car and listen to the birds that I should find in that habitat, then get out and find them with the iPod in one ear to confirm what I was hearing. I made significant progress using the BirdPod where I had been unsuccessful with just the CDs.

Rick Taylor
Everett

-----Original Message-----
>From: Regan Wensnahan <reganw at rockisland.com>
>Sent: Aug 28, 2006 5:10 PM
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: [Tweeters] Which songs to learn first?
>
>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
>
>Mark Wensnahan
>Ballard/Seattle
>reganw at rockislandDOTcom
>
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