Choose a “sit spot” near your home and visit there as often as possible- at least 15 minutes per day if you can. If this is your first time starting a sit-spot practice you can read more detailed instructions here or watch this video.

It’s important to practice slow mindful movement as you walk to and from your sit spot. Try to move as slowly and calmly as possible so you don’t scare off all the birds and animals.

Leave your phone and your field guide at home (for now) but bring your binoculars and journal with you. Try to spend the first several minutes after arriving at your spot just being there, settling into stillness, and tuning into all of your senses.

Try to make a habit of visiting your sit spot every day throughout the duration of this course. All the Field Assignments in this course can be done from this spot and the more often you visit the more you’ll start to notice! Also, try to visit your spot at different times of the day. Notice how your spot might feel different first thing in the morning vs in late afternoon, or even after dark.

Did you know that some birds have special “dawn song” that they only sing at sunrise? Wake up early one day and try to find out which ones!

In this course we’ll be building our mental database of bird songs and calls bit by bit. By focusing on just a few sounds at a time, we’ll build a strong foundation upon which we can add more and more songs as the course progresses. Along the way we’ll learn to distinguish and describe the unique characteristics of each song that will help us identify the birds singing them.

I call these weekly focus species our Jukebox Birds because they are the songs that we’ll hear over and over and over again and they will soon be deeply ingrained in your memory just like the classic hits on a jukebox machine.

For the first week, we will focus on the following very vocal and very common species:

• Carolina Chickadee

• Carolina Wren

• Northern Cardinal

• American Robin

• Eastern Towhee.

For this challenge, use the Merlin Bird ID app to listen to the song of each of the species above. See an example of how to listen to birdsongs on Merlin here.

But don’t just passively listen, do your best to imitate the songs back to yourself by singing or whistling. Try to let go of your self-consciousness and just be playful. Can you imagine or remember yourself as a child playing with toys and making all kinds of fun sound effects? Try to channel that noisy unabashed inner-child and make some silly bird sounds.*

Listen and repeat these songs as many times as possible throughout your week and try to refine your sound effect to be as accurate as possible (but don’t take yourself too seriously please).

*Actually, humans imitating birds isn’t that silly at all- humans have been imitating birdsongs for millennia in music and language. Birdsong may even be one of the original inspirations for human language!

Optional Advanced Path: For this and the remaining homework in this module, also include the primary call or calls of our Jukebox Birds into each assignment and challenge.

Next time you visit your sit spot, try to listen for the songs of our Jukebox Birds. Do you recognize any of them? Each time you hear one of our Jukebox Birds sing, imitate the sound back to yourself along with the name of the bird. For example when I hear a Carolina Wren singing I’ll say “piddily-piddily-piddily-pip! Carolina Wren”. Even if you don’t know the name of the bird you are hearing, you can still practice your imitation skills out loud. This echoing and repetition will actually help you listen more carefully and closely.

When you hear a bird singing close to you, use your binoculars and try to watch the bird while it makes the sound. Getting a visual image of the bird along with the song is actually another great way to embed these songs into your memory.

Remember those weird bird song sound effects you’ve been making? Well today you’re gonna figure out how to spell them!

When I was a kid I would read a lot of comic books and one of the things I loved about them was the way that the comic creators could make each scene come alive with written sound effects known as onomatopoeia. Check out some fun examples of comic book onomatopoeia. here.

For today’s challenge, write down your best approximation of the five bird songs that you’ve been listening to and repeating back to yourself. Try not to look at your field guide or other descriptions yet, just try to transcribe exactly what you hear.

For the artistically inclined folks out there, I challenge you to create a comic-book style drawing of one of our Jukebox Birds along with the sound effect! Actually, even if you’re not artistically inclined, give it a shot! I guarantee after spending 10 or 15 minutes sketching a bird and a sound effect, you’ll never forget what that bird says! Remember this is a birding class not an art class so don’t wory if its not beautiful or perfect, it’s all about the process!

Sometimes bird songs can remind us of phrases or words in English or another language. This word association is called a mnemonic and is another great tool to help us remember. For example some folks think the Indigo Bunting song sounds like “Fire! Fire! Where Where? Here! Here! Put it out! Put it out!” and of course some birds like Bobwhite or Whippoorwill got their English names based on what their songs sounded like to early colonizers.

Today while you’re at your sit spot, try to come up with a mnemonic for our five Jukebox bird songs that you are hearing. Get creative and make the words playful, silly, meaningful, or otherwise memorable. One of my birdsong teachers told me “If the mnemonic is lewd or a little bit spicy you’ll be more likely to remember it!” So have fun, and give birds some quirky and spunky personalities!

Now it’s finally time to look up the established mnemonics or onomatopoeia for each of our birds. Look up each bird in your field guide and read the description under Voice. Now listen to the song again on your Merlin app. Does the authors description make sense? Which mnemonic do you like better, yours or the field guide author? It’s important to note that while some mnemonics are culturally ingrained, there is no such thing as an “official” mnemonic for bird songs. So if yours is really good, share it! It might just catch on!

Google will also turn up some great birdsong mnemonic resources like this great comic strip by Bird and Moon or this extensive compilation by Tomm Lorenzin.

Bird Nerd Bonus: As I mentioned in a previous assignment, watching birds sing helps ingrain their songs into our memory- this is known as synesthesia. If you connect these sensory experiences enough then whenever we hear a Carolina Wren song our mind will automatically conjure a picture of a rusty brown bird with a white eyebrow and a curved beak. Check out Lang Elliot’s amazing videos of singing b rdsand let the synesthesia begin!

Another great tool for learning birdsong is to connect the sounds with something else in your mind or imagination. This is known as association-based learning and you probably do it all the time already. For example, imagine a pumpkin in your mind- what does that image remind you of? If you’re anything like me, when you conjured that image of a pumpkin, you also thought of Halloween along with all the costumes, candies, and spooky sounds of trick or treating. Or maybe you thought of the smell or taste of delicious pumpkin pie, or a fond memory of gardening in the early autumn, or the sticky slippery texture of pumpkin innards as you prepare to carve a jack-o-lantern. Whatever your association with pumpkins may be, the idea of “pumpkin” likely has loads of neural and somatic connections for you.

OK enough with the theory and on to the practice! Today you’re going to start building up some of those neural and somatic connections with different birdsongs!

Today while you listen to birds at your sit spot, let your imagination run wild and think about what other sounds each birdsong reminds you of. A classic example is that Cardinal song reminds many people of the sound of cartoon laser guns: “piew piew piew!”

But don’t stop at comparing the birdsong to other sounds, really dig deep into your poetic creativity and try to answer one or two of the following questions about the songs of each of your Jukebox Birds:

What is the emotional quality of the song/ what mood does it evoke?

If the sound was an object what would it feel like? Heavy or light? Rough, smooth, soft, hard? Wet or dry?

If the sound was a piece of visual art, what would it look like? What shapes colors or images does it evoke?

If this sound was a flavor, what would it taste like? If it was a scent, what would it smell like?

No need to answer all of these prompts, but try to come up with at least one association with each birdsong. Once you’ve done this for this week’s Jukebox Birds, go back and come up with some associations for some of last week’s Jukebox Birds.