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Activity 5: Identifying Bird Calls

Children who live in noisy cities hardly get to hear the cooing of the bulbul or the cackling of the geese. But listening for and identifying bird calls is very beneficial for our children. Here is why:

1. Like any other faculty, our ability to hear improves when exercised. Bird calls are of varying frequencies and listening to them exercises our sense of hearing.

2. Differentiating among different bird calls teaches the child to compare, while also sharpening their memory.

3. Talking about sounds requires the child to understand related vocabulary, including words like ‘high’, ‘low’ and ‘shrill’. These words not just improve their language skills but also helps them understand pitch and rhythm, laying the foundation for an understanding of music.

Materials required:

1. If you live in a busy town or a city, like I do, visiting a farm or a forest cannot be a regular activity. We do have many lakes around us and there are many birds that visit these areas. Yet, catching their sounds above the noise of the morning walkers and the on-going traffic is no easy task. So to familiarize your child with bird calls, you will initially need to take the help of technology. Here are some links to YouTube videos that give you the sounds of some common birds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok-TRRSV9HI&t=418s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfFldO-B8vE&pbjreload=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vblYLpJ-0qg&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZpqZmfwvv4&feature=youtu.be

We start with these videos and then progress to farm and lake visits. That way the children are already familiar with the calls of several common birds and will find it easier to recognize them in nature.
2. You may need a blindfold to help the child focus on the audio stimulus over the more attractive video stimulus.

Steps:

1. Allow the child to watch the videos. Let them see the birds and repeat the names of the birds after you.

2. Now, blindfold the child and play the video again. This time they will be forced to concentrate on their hearing skills as all visual aid is missing.
If the child is not comfortable with a blindfold, you can simply cover the screen or ask the child to turn their back to the screen.
Say the names of the birds aloud, two or three times, before you play the sound they make.

3. Help the child to identify the birds by their bird call by linking it with any other sound that they are already familiar with. Let’s look at an example.
The turkey sounds like the engine of a car or a motorbike that is having some trouble getting started. That’s the sound you hear when the ignition is on but the vehicle refuses to start. Many children would have already heard this sound from vehicles. Connecting new information to old information is a technique in memory building that can be taught with this activity.
Similarly, many children have heard the cuckoo clock but not the real cuckoo bird. They sound identical and remembering this will help them identify the cuckoo’s call easily.

4. Mimic the bird sounds during the day when doing other things like helping the child take a bath or when you are waiting for the school bus. This will teach them to use periodic repetition to reinforce information in their memory.

Extra:


If your child is ready, you could explain to them how some words sound like bird sounds. Words like ‘twitter’, ‘tweet’, ‘cheep’, ‘cackle’ are used to describe the sounds that birds make and even sound like bird calls. This is called Onomatopoeia, but you can keep that big word to yourself for now.

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