Whatbird.com

I have a bird call CD and it worked great for the first time used. We placed an outdoor speaker outside our kitchen window and played the CD. It plays various birds in my area and sounds so real. After a few minutes we had three or four different birds coming and chatting away with the calls. Has anyone else ever tried this?

No, I haven't tried it yet but thought seriously about doing that to attract purple martins to the new martin house we put up.  This was our first year trying our hand at being martin landlords but we had no takers so next year we'll probably trying playing the "dawn song" and maybe even putting up some decoys to attract their attention.

I have a CD w/bird songs but it also has some speaking parts, too so it probably wouldn't work.  What's the name of your CD and where did you get it...if you don't mind my asking

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Matthew 6:26

There is a new book out called Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America by Ted Floyd (know the name?). It comes with a great CD containing 587 mp3 files which are concentrated on 138 birds of North Amercia. Each bird has 3 to 5 different songs, alerts, matting calls, etc. I picked it up at Barnes and Noble at 20% off getting it down to $14.99. As a guide its got small photos of birds, and they are good, but it lacks any kind of depth of information like you'll find here.

valleygirl:

No, I haven't tried it yet but thought seriously about doing that to attract purple martins to the new martin house we put up.  This was our first year trying our hand at being martin landlords but we had no takers so next year we'll probably trying playing the "dawn song" and maybe even putting up some decoys to attract their attention.

I have a CD w/bird songs but it also has some speaking parts, too so it probably wouldn't work.  What's the name of your CD and where did you get it...if you don't mind my asking

 

I am sorry I don't know the name of it. Its just titles bird songs. My husband made it for me from the internet. I will ask him where he got it and what it's called.

> It comes with a great CD containing 587 mp3 files

I bought this since it was so inexpensive.  The CD is really quite nice; it has already solved a few mysteries for me already.  The strength is it gives a whole range of songs/calls, and not just the most typical.  The unfortunate item is it only features a subset of birds.

On this note, does anyone know of a birdcall CD/DVD which has a greater amount of birds featuring multiple songs and calls?   I have a Flycatcher mystery to solve, and the Smithsonian CD did not manage this one.  

If anyone's interested, the central New Jersey bird in question hung out in a small flock, hovered for about 5 seconds over a field, perched at the top of somewhat tall trees, and while it had the dark head and light belly of an Eastern Kingbird (which at first glance I thought they were), it did not have the white tail end, and (unless there were other similar birds going to-and-fro), had very distinct wing bars.  I wrote down the vocalization as follows:   "Wow! A dirty bit....   Wow! A dirty bit."   It also made the following quick call a few times in succession: "PIToo-PIToo-PIToo-PIToo."

I have been using Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs for the past 5 years, just get the region you live in, or if you travel a lot get both East and West. It has basically all the species for the region except for the rarities, plus on most species it has multiple different calls.

 

 

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Thanks, Featherbrain, I picked up a copy.