Bird Voice Pen (1 Viewer)

Hope this is the right place for this if not mods please move it.

Out birding today met someone with a Bird Voice pen for bird song.

Does anyone have any experience/comments on this and where it might be purchased?

Didn't have chance to ask the chap which is why I am asking here.

Many thanks,

Hugh

They have a very short and limited sample of each (common) bird. Most birds have a varied repertoire with a number of different vocalisations depending on varying usages and conditions so not that helpful imo. The sound produced from the card pen is quite 'clinical' and the levels equalised, whereas bird vocalisation produces a very different sound when heard in situ due to weather conditions/distance/habitat/environmental ambiance/time of year etc - you'd probably be better off getting an ipod or reputable cd collection where the recordings are more extensive and taken against a background ambiance of the habitat. Better still, learn the calls by tracking down and getting a visual on everything you hear!!

One of the members of a survey team on Mull I was part of had one - the Corncrake on the pen card sounded exactly the same as the local Starlings who were mimicing their Corncrake neighbours in real life but when you actually listened to both 'samples' in the field there were some very sutble differences, not least the Starling mimicry being mixed with a range of other Starling vocals and the 'real' Corncrakes vocal having repetition lasting a lot longer than on the recording as well as being marginal softer with a baser tone - (as well as emanating from a clump of iris beds of course) subtlies difficult to distinquish on 2-3 sec bursts of clean recordings. That's just an obvious example but there are genuine confusion species that would be difficult to separate on the basis of a pen card recording unless you were able to see the bird and can already ID it on sight.

We had fun in the Pub with it though!

I had one of the first examples of Birdvoice a few years ago and found it was a voracious eater of batteries. After a replacement which had the same symptoms it soon got relegated to the back of a drawer!
An upto date app on an I pod touch is now much more reliable.:t:

Thanks both much appreciated. Have cd which stays in the car with my large bird guides unless I feel I need to carry them.
Have been birding for half a century so memory is in need of charging. Carry a noddy field guide as an aide memoire and this looked good for calls. Am not good at learning or remembering calls - have tried time and time again!
Can you explain the kit you both use and the price and supplier?

Many thanks,

Hugh

grumps said:

Can you explain the kit you both use and the price and supplier?

Many thanks,

Hugh

Click to expand...

I don't use one Hugh for the reasons I mentioned above. I don't know the make of the one the guy on Mull's was but I think they are very expensive and as I said, only very basic.

I have several CD collections including a second hand collection of Bird Songs and Calls of Britain and Europe on 4 CDs. Jean-Claude Roche (which I've used from time to time for unfamiliar European bird vocals if I'm birding abroad but not to take into the field, more before I go out with a target species in mind or when I return from a day's birding. In the field, I find listening carefully and taking notes (eg. comparing call to familiar birds, written song description etc) helps me memorise vocals better tbh and as I said, tracking down the vocal to get a visual to consign ID to memory long term - otherwise, with my bad memory, I would have to repeat the process every time I hear the same species and would never learn anything! Don't use any type of guides in the field in the UK.

People have different ways of learning calls (and visual Id's), there are so many aids now - including I believe a gadget that you can point at the sound and which identifies it for you!

Another method, which several birding friends use, would be to record the vocal on your mobile phone then ID it from that with your CDs. My favorite method when birding abroad is to select several target species for the day and then just drum it into my head before I go out from the CDs (usually just before I go to sleep the night before!), then once I hear it in the field, track down a confirmed visual. I find this actually helps to find your target species, especially in forested areas or dense scrub etc