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Bird Sounds!

GENERAL

David Attenborough's The Life of Birds on the PBS website has an introduction to birdsong with seven nice samples (in Real Player format) from around the world: Kakapo, Australian Musk Duck, British "dawn chorus," Wedge-tailed Shearwater, American Streamertail, Calfbird and Superb Lyrebird. No scientific names, no locations.

The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology has an Animal Diversity website with Aves, a section containing much detailed information about many species of birds.

WorldTwitch has a Bird Sounds page with many useful links, especially to exotic places and species.

Mangoverde.com plans to be "a digital field guide to all of the bird species in the world." Currently 3014 records of 1445 species.

WildlifeLands Birds Image Archive has "many bird images from all over the globe," many with sound links, all jumbled together. Click on the image to have the bird identified.

JungleWalk has a nicely organized collection of links to bird sounds on the web.

Pulse of the Planet is a series of 2-minute radio segments produced by the National Geographic magazine. Many of the segments involve birds and play appropriate bird sounds. But the search engine for the audio archive is hard to use. Here are some: "Return of the Wood Thrush" (search under wood thrush); "Bird Song: Music" (music); "Bird Song: Dialects" (dialects); "Bird Song: Learn" (learn).

Martyn Stewart's site Naturesound.Org has a World Bird Sounds page with a dozen recordings (in addition to his large North American collection).

The British Library has a Listen to nature website with 400 audio extracts including many interesting bird sounds. Check out Nightingale (a 1910 recording, "the first published recording of a bird") under "Wrens, Chats and Thrushes," where you will also find a very nice Musician Wren. On the site is Jeffrey Boswall's Language of Birds, "an introduction to how, why, and when birds communicate."

NORTH AMERICA

The Mining Co. Birding Net Links page lists many of these and many other links.

The Patuxent-Bird Songs page is maintained by the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (United States Geological Survey). They have a separate Song List and Call List, as well as a Bird Quiz with a section on song.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has a ``Sound of the Week'' from the Library of Natural Sounds.

The eNature birdAudio page has "The songs and calls of more than 550 North American birds" and links to other birding information. Very high quality recordings by Lang Elliott.

Tom Lorenzin's BirdSong Mnemonics with links to other birder pages.

Bird Song Mnemonics & Phonetics by Georgann Schmalz.

Quick Guide to Bird Songs for Beginning Birders has compiled 53 nice mnemonics.

Greg Kunkel's birdsongs, WAV files with beautiful sonagrams.

Doug Von Gausig's Bird Sounds a very pretty page with over 165 records (of over 140 species), mostly or all from Arizona. These are .wav files, 80-200 kB. "All the sounds on the pages were recorded by myself using a Sony MZ-R30 digital MiniDisc recorder, and all recordings were sight verified."

Audubon's Multimedia Birds of America has a replica of the complete John James Audubon's Birds of America (1840-1844), which includes the full text, color plates, figures and bird calls for many of the illustrated species.

Birding by Ear by Dick Walton offers "a crash course in birdsong identification." (Uses RealPlayer 3.0)

The Royal British Columbia Museum's Grace Bell Collection web-site has some 50 pages, each for a species, with song and/or call. This is part of the Canadian Heritage Information Network BIRDS - A Virtual Exhibition.

Jeff Groth's Crossbills Audiovisual Guide at the American Museum of Natural History has crossbill calls and links to other natural history museums.

Herman Miller's Animal Sound Sites on the Net has lots of links to bird songs, and much more.

Andrew Amacher and a partner recorded 13 California Bird Songs at the Blodgett Forest Research Station.

Bird Song Files maintained by Steven Hopp. Mainly Vireos (3 species) at present but they are very nice.

The Florida Museum of Natural History has Florida Bird Songs: over 90 species, short and long .wav records.

Waterfowl Gallery on the Ducks Unlimited website has 24 waterfowl recordings from the Cornell University Library of Natural Sounds.

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota has sound samples for many raptors. Go to the page for the raptor you want to hear.

Compare a synthesized Western Meadowlark to the real thing on Peter Assman's Trackdraw page.

The Arizona Bird Field Data Resources page has "images, sound recordings, and explanatory text about Arizona birds." Current experimental sound format is Windows Media Player. Lots of great photos.

Neville Recording puts out CDs of Canadian bird songs. This site has three nice, long samples (Common Loon, Golden crowned Sparrow, Northern Water Thrush).

Bird Watcher's Digest.com has a bird identification page with some 85 nice records.

The Canadian Wildlife Service Wildlife page has links to pages on Loon (4 records of different calls), Bicknell's Thrush (6 records) and Piping Plover (1 record). AU, AIF, and WAV format.

Darwin has a Loon Multimedia page many records of different species of Loon.

Kirtland's Warbler has its own page sponsored by the United States Forest Service.

Bowron Lake Provincial Park has Sounds of the Parks with Loon, Horned Owl, Canada Goose, Bald Eagle, and Wolf.

Birds on Assateague has sounds of Laughing Gull, Sanderling, Bob-white and Common Tern.

University College of the Fraser Valley has The Sounds of a Walk in the Forest: five records, including Pacific-slope Flycatcher.

Wind Cave National Park (South Dakota) has a Bird List with 73 sound records including Sharp-tailed Grouse, Dickicissel, Grasshopper Sparrow.

Lang Elliott (Nature Sounds Studio, Ithaca NY) has posted 12 irresistible photos of singing birds with high-quality Real Audio records of songs to match.

Bicknell's Thrush (closely related to the Gray-cheeked) has a site of its own with records of six different calls, maintained by Dan Busby of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Vivanatura has Bird Sounds: 55 sound records of Mexican birds arranged alphabetically on 3 pages.

Mexican Bird Songs recorded by John R. Sauer. Melodious blackbird and 15 others; also White-bellied wren on its own page.

Natural History Education, Science, Technology has a sound-based Brief Guide to Common Birds, designed for the vision-impaired. The site presents 28 records of common birds and a quiz.

The Macauley Library of Natural Sounds at Cornell's Commercial Productions page has audio samples from several of their discs.

Owling.com has a site for North American Owls. All 25 nesting species photographed and recorded.

The Species Audio Library of the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas features high-quality MP3 recordings (made by John Feith) of some 200 Wisconsin species.

Learn Bird Songs offers 30 photos and recordings of common birds, organized by habitat. The photographs and recordings -by Lang Elliott- are of superb quality. They're selling the birdPod, but this sales pitch is a pleasure to experience.

Nature Sounds.ca is a website "dedicated to sharing the sounds and experiences of the woods and forests of northeastern North America." Several high-quality free downloads are available, samples of CDs for sale.

Martyn Stewart's site Naturesound.Org has a huge collection of Bird Sounds of North America (organized alphabetically) and lots of other material.

CENTRAL and SOUTH AMERICA

Brazilian Bird Songs a site with 51 .au and .wav files. Yes! Includes the Organ Wren, the fabled Uirapuru. Listening to this song brings good luck for life. (Legend antedates Web). The sound files are very large but very beautiful. I am having trouble connecting with this site (6/18/2005).

Mirella Mariani Tassi's Canto das Aves has a Galeria de Cantos with some 75 bird sound records listed by their local common names. I could not get the songs to play (6/18/2005).

Some Bird Sounds from Bolivia contains eight "very short cuts taken from Sjoerd Mayer's CD-ROM Birds of Bolivia."

The Sights and Sounds of Costa Rica has a dozen or so nice records by Doug van Gausig.

Bird Songs of the Yucatan Peninsula by Daniel Mennill is a beautifully designed page with 16 excellent records accompanied by sonograms and analyses. Don't miss Spot-breasted Wren, Great-tailed Grackle and Montezuma Oropendola.

Dan Mennill also has Bird Songs of Santa Rosa, Costa Rica; 25 records with pictures and sonograms.

Aves de Chile has some 60 recordings of Chilean birds, due to Guillermo Egli. Only local names at present. The site links to a dictionary giving literal translations (Seven Colors, Blind Hen, etc.) which are less than useful. But if you click on a name, the bird's page has its English and Scientific names.

Bird sounds from Suriname has some 40 WAV records including Screaming Piha and White Bellbird, plus 7 nice video clips. Also available in Dutch.

John van der Woude's reports on his birding trips to South America have sound files in MP3 format:

• Venezuela (1997) (35 records)
• Southern Ecuador (1998) (26 records)
• Tambopata, Peru (1999) (33 records) plus 17 more made by friends in 2001.
• Bolivia/Chile/Argentina (2000) (50 records)
• Southeast Brazil (2001) (43 records)

Owling.com has a site for Central American Owls. 25 species photographed and recorded, with more to come.

The Amazon Birdwatchers' Website has 20 nice recordings (Red-billed Toucan, Uirapuru, etc.) by Reynier Omena Jr., with photos by Robson Esteves Czaban. (I was not able to get the soundfiles on the English-language page to play, but those on the Portuguese page are OK 6/18/2005)

Bob Planqué and Willem-Pier Vellinga have organized Xeno Canto, a site devoted to making "the bewildering diversity of bird songs from South and Central America more accessible to bird enthusiasts." Currently 4671 recordings of 1801 species. Searchable. Outstanding!

Biblioteca de Sonidos Aves de México lets you listen to a large number of Mexican birds. Text in Spanish but birds are organized by family with Scientific, Spanish and English names. Don't miss the Oropendola (Passeriformes, Emberizidae, Icterinae).

EUROPE

The Virtual Bird, Bird Songs [of Finland] 43 excellent records, including Thrush Nightingale. "The bird song files are 51kb to 359kB. We have changed the format to high quality mp3 files."

Club voor Natuurgeluiden Registratie (Dutch bioacoustical association) Opnamen page has 41 .ra records of bird songs. (Requires audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin.)

Alberto Masi's Suoni & Canti degli Uccelli d'Europa has 413 excellent recordings of European birds. Nightingale and many many more. Searchable. Indexed by scientific name. Sonograms are not currently available.

The BBC's Dawn Chorus page has sounds and advice about recording.

The Bird species list of Walton Hall Nature Trail (Open University) has 16 song records.

The Dutch Birding Association (go to Sound Gallery) have about 40 .ra records.

Dierentuin.net have a bird song index; in Dutch.

Réveil des Oiseaux has the songs of all the birds featured in Messiaen's composition, and additional information about bird songs in classical music. In French.

WildlifeLands, a site maintained by Don van Poppel, has a Sound Page (you have to navigate to it!) with some 20 photos and records of mostly European birds. Includes Hoopoe and Lapwing.

Northamptonshire Wildlife has a Sound Gallery with over 85 records including Little Grebe and Reed Warbler.

The Knutsford Ornithological Society website has 36 sound records in WAV and RA format. Their Cuckoo recording has a typical rural background - very nice.

AvisoftSASLab (``The comprehensive Sound Analysis and Synthesis Laboratory Software for Windows-PC's'') has an Animal Sound Recordings page with 108 bird samples, mostly recorded in Germany. Also Bats, Dogs, Insects and Frogs. Check out Skylark and Marsh Frog (the aptly named Rana ridibunda).

Wildsong is a British commercial outfit with a Listening Room featuring very high-quality recordings of 18 species (some linked to sonograms and slowed-down versions) and other nature sounds. Check out Marsh Warbler, uncannily like NA Mockingbird.

The Hungarian Scout Association website carries a birdsong page with hundreds of records, listed alphabetically by scientific name. (These are the same records that were on Masi's site European Birds - Sounds and Sonograms).

El Canto de las Aves is a Spanish site with 10 RM records; Nightingale, (European) Robin, etc.

Norwegian Cyberbirding (charming site, worth a visit) has a Fuglelyder (Birdsong) page with over 300 records of European birds. These are the records which were on Masi's site. The good news is, they have been compressed into MP3 format. The bad news is, they are arranged alphabetically by their names in Norwegian. But the scientific name is also listed: your browser can find it.

Oiseaux.net is an elaborate site with one page for each of the birds of France. Many different photos of each species, plus sounds. In French, but the alphabetical master list is available in English or in Latin (by scientific name). Merci Didier.

Vogelgeluidencd = Bird sounds CD "is a project to collect the sounds of all european birds. People can listen to sounds and contribute sounds. At a low cost you can buy a CD with sounds collected so far. There are now over 800 sounds of ca. 300 bird species." Site has a dozen samples (click on "Voorbeelden") labeled in het Nederlands, from Alpengierzwaluw to Wespendief.

SoundsNatural.be is Dominique Laloux' collection of 194 records of European birds, mostly from Belgium. He specializes in long MP3 records. Check out the blackbird (Turdus merula). Vaut le détour!

AFRICA

George Williams has a Berenty Reserve (Madagascar) page with lemur vocalizations and four bird records.

Teus Luijendijk has posted Sickle-biled Vanga and Rufous Vanga on his Bird recordings page, along with an Indri, all from Madagascar.

An Oriental Sky Lark, recorded in Israel, also among Teus Luijendijk's Bird recordings.

ASIA

H.Hiraizumi's Birding Page has many links to birdsong records. Text is in encoded japanese.

Bird Calls "mostly recorded in Taiwan" by Wayne Hsu. 22 records, zipped .wav files.

The Hong Kong Bird-Watching Society's Collection of Bird Songs has 60 species, many with several records (.wav files). "The aim of this page is to encourage more members to get started recording bird songs."

Teus Luijendijk has posted 3 birdsongs from Viet Nam (Grey-crowned Crocias, Grey-billed Tesia, Large Scimitar-babbler) on his Bird recordings page.

Christof Zöckler's sounds of arctic birds are now posted on The Arctic Bird Library (United Nations Environmental Programme - World Conservation Monitoring Centre), which ``focuses upon the 125 species of water birds, which breed in the Arctic region'' and has sound records for 21 of them.

Listening Earth has posted samples from their CD "The Sacred Forests of India - Nagarhole National Park," including calls of the Coucal Centropus sinensis.

John van der Woude went to West Malaysia in March 2002 (20 records) and to Thailand in April 2003 (43 records available on his site).

Khong Tuck Khoon's Maylasian Bird Calls page has some 60 species with many records. Some very exotic sounds. Check out Drongo and Iora.

AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND and INDONESIA

Common Birds of the Australian National Botanic Gardens has songs/calls for six of them. Check out the Kookaburra!

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

Merry, merry king of the bush is he!

Laugh, kookaburra laugh, kookaburra 

Gay your life must be! 

Kiwi Wildlife Tours NZ Gallery features photos, and sound portraits of 33 New Zealand birds. Check out the North Island Kokako, a wattlebird with "the most beautiful and haunting call of all of New Zealand's birds."

Birds Australia has a Bird Calls page with 6 MP3 records.

Listening Earth is a rich and attractive site with all kinds of information about Australian wildlife. Has samples in RealAudio and MP3 as well as six nice .wav records. Check out the Grey Butcherbirds, ``arguably Australia's most sublime songbirds.''

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation maintains a huge Australian Bird Songs site with some 125 records.

Birding Sulawesi and Halmahera has 8 records (Piping Crow, Malia, Wallace's Standardwing, Ivory-breasted Pitta, Moluccan Owlet-Nightjar, Sulawesi Nightjar, Sulawesi Drongo, Great Shortwing) in Quicktime format.

Listening Earth has several samples of sounds from Sulawesi (click on "From Exotic Landas," then "Sulawesi," then "Nature Sounds of Sulawesi") MP3 files.

The MacPherson Natural History Unit Sound Archive has 7 CDs of New Zealand Birds for sale, plus 5 more of Polynesia, Melanesia, etc. There is one sample available from each CD. Check out the Stewart Island Kiwi.

Dan Mennill's Bird Songs of the Atherton Tablelands (Queensland, Australia) is a beautiful site with pages for 14 birds, each with sonogram, photograph and long and short sound records in MP3 format. Check out the Mountain Thornbill and the Eastern Whipbird

New Zealand Birds is a commercial site with lots of information, including a sight-and-sound gallery of 10 stars: Kaka, Kakapo, Kiwi, Kokako, Korimako, Pipiwharauroa, Piwakawaka, Ruru, Tieke, Tui.

Nature Sounds of New Zealand has samples from their CD. A lovely several-minute continuous recording including thunder and a downpour, plus short records of Tui, Bellbird and Saddleback.

OTHER SITES

Guide to Animal Sounds on the Net has a very complete set of links, indexed by bird families.

Electronic Resources on Ornithology hasa large collection of useful links.

birding.com has "over 2500 links." "Featured bird" is featured with its song. Includes "Top 25 Birding Websites."

The O. W. L. (Ornithological Web List) has links to "1200+ non-commercial sites devoted to wild birds and their study" including 176 Sound & Image Libraries.

Birding by Ear is a series of CD's that "combine effective educational narrative with high quality birdsong recordings."

American Birding Association home page has many useful links.

The Williams College Biology Department has a Zebra Finch Song Archive with songs, and sonograms documenting song variation among several generations of captive birds.

birding.about.com has many links to bird songs and related material.

An Introduction with many samples. Runs on Macintosh.

Chipper Woods Bird Observatory page has many excellent photos of birds they have banded.

Wild Birds Unlimited is "the first and largest franchise system of retail stores catering to the backyard birdfeeding hobbyist." Check out their FeederCam.

Human whistling as a sound of nature? Check out Robert Stemmons "The Bird Man" and his whistling web site.

Our Feathered Friends -Backyard Birding.

Birders Webring.

Birdworks.Inc, a site on Long Island with good-natured ``Birdwords'' and a bird-song tutorial CD for sale.

Klassiker der Biologie im Internet has a complete online collection of splendid images of plates from Naumann's Naturgeschichte der Vögel Mitteleuropas. Indexed by scientific name.

A Última Arca de Noé (The Last Noah's Ark) is a Brazilian site about ecology and the environment, with a page on bird vocalizations. They also have a huge list of bird sites.

WildBirds.com"the place to come for answers about wild birds in your yard and around the corner!"

The bigger the brain, the sweeter the bird song Environmental News Network item dated November 20 2000.

ERIC - the Educational Resources Information Center, the federally funded web information site, has a database of useful references (search on "bird song").

Birds of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia is a source for ornithological materials produced in the former Soviet Union.

Fågelstudier is a Swedish site with ornithological information and an interesting attitude.

Bavarian Birds and others ... has a bird identification quiz and BabelBirdy a German-English-Scientific-French-Spanish bird name dictionary.

Ernie Jardine, author of ``Bird Song, Identification Made Easy'' has a Bird Song site focusing on learning bird song.

Service Canadien de la Faune/Canadian Wildlife Service, Québec region, has a Imagier-Program page with 85 bird pictures.

The Mt. Bruce (New Zealand) National Wildlife Center has a site with pictures and descriptions of 10 endangered species, and a CD for sale.

New Zealand Wildlife Tours have a page on the Royal Albatross colony at Taiaroa Head with pictures and information about the species.

Die Vogelstimmen Europas, Nordafrikas und Vorderasiens (Birdsounds of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; English text available) sells a set of "17 Audio-CDs with 2817 recordings of 819 species." Site has complete list of recorded species.

South African Birding has a nice collection of CDs for sale.

EPIC Environmental Protection in the Caribbean has a webpage with photos and checklists of birds, mainly from the Lesser Antilles.

Mighty Pods sells the BirdPod, an iPod pre-loaded with songs from the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs, Eastern Region, "organized to enable quick identification of bird songs in the field." You can also buy software and recordings to convert your own iPod.

Birding Binoculars Guide is "a noncommercial site [which] focuses exclusively on optics for birders (including a buying guide, extensive faq, binoculars reviews, a large glossary, and more)."

BirdSounds.nl "is an online shop for bird and nature sounds. There are recordings of more than 8000 bird species ... ."

Kiwi Conservation Club written for children but has nicely presented information about New Zealand birds.

Hauraki Gulf New Zaland Pelagic Tours has a Birdwatching Gallery with pictures and descriptions of New Zealand Seabirds.

ALOSA, Sonidos de la naturaleza sells sound clips of nature sounds from Spain, Portugal, the Balearics and the Canarys. Several hundred species available.

Bird Studies Canada maintains a huge list of Bird Links to the World. Currently around 27 thousand items.