Visual notation of bird songs

Bird watchers (a.k.a.-birders) make more identifications through bird songs than visual observations. Recognizing birds by song is a critical skill for any birder. There are more than a few sets of records and tapes of bird songs available that can be used to learn them.

There is a book, of interest to birders, and denizens of this site, that shows bird songs in notation. It is A Guide to Bird Songs, by Aretas A. Saunders, Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1951. The notation shows five qualities of a bird’s song: time, pitch, volume, quality, and phonetics. At the top of the diagram is an indication of quality: clear, loud whistle, or harsh rattle, or the like. Below is the notation of the song in lines that are continuous or broken, of longer or shorter length, rising or falling, thicker or thinner, to indicate the line of the song and the duration of each note and the song as a whole. To the left is an indication of the musical pitch of the most prominent note or the mid point of the song. At the bottom is a phonetic transcription of the song, which, when combined with the information above, gives an indication of what the bird is saying in song.

Saunders gives us a visual representation of the songs of 201 eastern U.S. birds in this fashion. As an example of the visual representation of sound, it is quite a masterpiece. As with any notation of sound, it takes a bit of practice with known sounds to learn how to interpret the notation in this book. The book is out of print, but can be obtained through interlibrary loan.