Bird Mimicry

This is a bird song CD with a difference – play the Great Tit track and you will hear a Nuthatch, play the Song Thrush track and you will hear Quail and play the Jay track and you will hear the mewing of a Common Buzzard and the neighing of a horse!

There are recordings of those notorious mimics Marsh Warbler and Starling imitating Great Tit, Blackbird, Magpie, Greenfinch and Swallow and Jackdaw, Tawny Owl, Curlew, Lapwing and Common Buzzard respectively.

These are just a few of the surprises from this remarkable CD, which signs off with a series of imitations of humans and machines, including a captive Bullfinch whistling German folk melodies and a Blackbird mimicking the sound of a computer modem.

First published in Birdwatch 168: 51 (June 2006).