Listening to Birdsong

Materials You Need: Birdsong audio (optional)

What You Can Do Together:

Step 1

Step outside and listen to the birds – the best time of day is around sunrise or sunset. See whether you can identify the sounds of more than one species.

Step 2

Imitate the sounds of the birds you can hear. Encourage younger children to practice these sounds, or see whether they can repeat them back to you.

Step 3

See whether you can identify which species of birds are making the sounds. Listen out for simple calls, like the ‘coo roo-c’too-coo’ or ‘oh-oo-oor’ of a pigeon. You may want to listen to examples of birdsong audio to help you identify different calls and songs.

Step 4

By recording or repeating the sounds heard, see if you can put together your own ‘dawn chorus’ of birdsong. It can be repetitive, like chanting the sounds, or without rhythm – that’s the beauty of birdsong!

What Your Child is Learning: Researchers have found parallels between the way young birds learn to sing and how babies learn to speak! Young birds master singing in stages. They start with a ‘subsong’ phase – the equivalent of babbling – then move on to fixing the melody, until they get it correct, similarly to the way human babies learn to speak.