Birding by Sound

Lynette is a keen birder and birding by sound has always been part of her birding experience since her very first outing with young experienced birders near Grahamstown. She is also a very keen bird call recordist and contributor to the international bird call website called Xeno Canto. In this webinar she will chat about her early birding experiences and discuss the importance of learning bird calls not only for identifying birds in the field but for helping identify the more difficult birds like warblers and cisticolas that look alike but can usually be identified by their calls. She will explain the differences between bird calls and songs and the various types of bird calls and their uses. She will also give tips on how to improve your ability to memorize bird songs and calls and to help you to become a better birder.

Lynette will also be bringing in southern African bird call experts to talk about the various aspects of bird vocalisations. Tim Cockcroft will be chatting about how he learnt bird calls from a young age to this stage of his life as an accomplished bird guide and he will also contribute to the section of regional dialects. Etienne Marais, an accomplished birder and bird guide, will talk about his love of birding by sound and how he has helped to identify some rare birds by call recognition and by the more scientific use of spectrograms. Rick Nutall, a bird call enthusiast and bird guide, will talk about his love of bird vocalisations, recording bird calls and one of his favourite topics, mimicry in birds, and how you can analyse and log the mimicked birds on Audacity. This webinar will inspire you to learn the bird songs and calls and to make you a better birder with more awareness and appreciation of the natural world around you.