This is bird note.

Since it's often hard to see a bird, veteran birders characterize the sounds of birds in order to identify them.

So what words do they use?

Well, they use whistle, for example, to describe the sound of an olive-sided fly catcher.

What about the sound of this stout little flyer, the belted kingfisher?

Would you call this a rattle or a trill?

Experienced birders would call it a rattle.

Now, here's a trill.

The dark-eyed junko delivers an almost perfect trill, rapidly repeated notes and equal intervals, same pitch, same speed.

What about the song of a house-ren?

Would you call this a trill or a cascade?

A birder with a trained ear would say cascade.

And is the song of a downy woodpecker a cascade or a whinny?

Experienced names it a whinny.

Practice makes perfect.

And you can hear them all again at birdnote.org.

For birdnote, I'm Mary McCann.