Identifying birds by their songs and calls can transform both your birding experience and your everyday life. This three-part class introduces “birding by ear” (BBE) – identifying birds by their vocalizations – with a focus on careful listening. The class is appropriate for anyone who is new to BBE or wants to learn more.
This is the first of three 90 minute sessions taught on successive Monday evenings:
April 12, 7-8:30 PM
April 19, 7-8:30 PM
April 26, 7-8:30 PM
Registration is closed.
Class donation is $45.
Session 1 – April 12, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Using both non-North American Birds and Washington State birds, we’ll analyze different characteristics of bird sound, for example the rhythm and the tone quality, to help with recognition and identification. We’ll talk about why birds make sounds and what we can learn from listening to them.
Session 2 – April 19, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Sonograms will be introduced as a tool to "see" differences between similar songs and calls, to use your eyes to help your ears. And we’ll practice the reality of trying to filter out the bird singing nearby in order to hear the one far away.
Session 3 – April 26, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
We’ll look at the amazing variation in bird song, not just between different species, but even within a species or an individual bird. And we’ll put it all together, using the tools from Sessions 1 and 2 to practice distinguishing similar pairs of birds.
Instructor: Whitney Neufeld-Kaiser
Whitney first became curious about birds after hanging a bird feeder on her front porch in 1998. She started to wonder which species were coming to visit, which prompted the purchase of her first bird field guide. It wasn’t long before she and her husband started noticing birds in places other than their front porch, which quickly led to the realization that Washington State is rich in diverse bird habitats. Evening visits to nearby Magnuson Park to watch birds led to weekend excursions to Yakima and Whidbey Island and beyond. A “life list” and a “yard list” were started, and Whitney’s friends started to think of her as “the bird person” they know. Whitney was accepted into the 2016-2017 Seattle Audubon Master Birder class, which was the first time she had really thought about trying to identify birds by their sounds. It turned out to be one of her favorite parts of the course. Since then, she’s gone down the rabbit hole of starting to make some of her own bird recordings and has developed three different “birding by ear” classes for various Audubon chapters in Washington. By day, Whitney is a licensed genetic counselor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Her other longtime hobby is music – Whitney sings in the vocal quartet Emerald Harmony and performs with her husband at local Oktoberfest events as two of the members of The Oompah Machine.