Black-throated Sparrow. Photo by Ken Miracle.
Join Nathan Pieplow, author of the Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds, for a four-part Zoom workshop series.
A Shared Vocabulary for Bird Sounds
Tuesdays, February 8th and 15th, 7:00pm via Zoom.
Most attempts to teach bird sound identification rely primarily on memorization. This workshop takes a different approach. Just as beginning birders learn the different parts of the bird and how to distinguish colors like “buff” and “rufous,” we will study the different parts of a sound and how to distinguish tone qualities like “burry” and “polyphonic.” Once we have a common vocabulary for describing bird sounds, we can apply these skills to some bird sound identification challenges in the region. No matter your level of experience, this workshop will help you listen to sounds more analytically, describe them more accurately, and use them more effectively in identifying birds.
Beyond Beginning Earbirding
Thursdays, February 24th and March 3rd, 7:00pm via Zoom
(Participants should take “A Shared Vocabulary for Bird Sounds” first.) Once you acquire basic skill at birding by ear, what is the fastest way to work up to the next level? In this workshop you will learn how to use heuristics: mental shortcuts that don’t get you all the way to an identification, but that can cut identification problems in half. You’ll learn a few heuristics in the first part of the workshop, and in the second part, you’ll create your own, to help yourself with a bird identification problem you are particularly interested in.
Sign up for one session or both. Recordings will be sent out afterwards. Scholarships are available.
If you missed a session, register to receive the recordings.
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About Nathan Pieplow:
Growing up in South Dakota, Nathan got started identifying bird songs by studying the classic “Birding By Ear” field guides in the Peterson series. It wasn’t until 2003, when he faced the frustrations of studying sounds for my first trips to Mexico and Costa Rica, that he became dedicated to finding new and better ways to learn, describe, and catalog bird sounds. Along the way Nathan became a sound recordist and an amateur ethologist (a student of animal behavior).
Nathan is not one of those superhuman beings who can identify every singing bird, or discern the nocturnal flight call of a Blackpoll Warbler as it passes overhead in the dark. His high-frequency hearing is getting worse every year, and he doesn’t have a great auditory memory. For him to learn bird sounds, he wanted more resources: more recordings, better glossaries, deeper discussions. So he set out to create his own resources. The Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds is the result of that effort.
Nathan lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado. He is a former editor of the quarterly journal Colorado Birds and one of the developers of the Colorado County Birding Website and the Colorado Birding Trail. Nathan regularly give talks about bird sounds to bird clubs and ornithological societies.
Event Contact
For more information, contact Dondi Black: dondi@goldeneagleaudubon.org