Birders in every hemisphere spend this time of year preparing for the Great Migrations. It does not matter where you live, several species of birds are going arrive at your location, pass through, or simply come out of or flee to the woods or marshes as Spring or Fall approaches. This means it is time to brush up on your birdsong and vocalization knowledge because when the birds are en route or newly arrived they tend to hide and your best bet at identifying them is with the sounds they can’t stop themselves from making.

So, for this edition of the I and the Bird blog carnival, you will be asked to practice your vocalizations as you read through the submissions. For each submission I’ve indicated a bird call. The bird call is the link to the submission. So, when you go to visit the submission, make the bird call at the same time that you click on the link. If you do it correctly, there will be a special dinging sound. If you do it incorrectly, there will be no dinging sound. Keep clicking going through the links until you are able to produce a proper call, indicated by the dinging sound, for each one.

Good luck:

The Listening Earth Blog: Square-tailed Kites breeding locally – kerrrr… kerrrr…

SkeptiVet: Life and Death in the winter snow – tweet

The Zen Birdfeeder: It’s a Hard Knock Life for Birds – chirp.

Slugyard: Neighborhood Birds with a Twist – tweet.

The Little House in the Not-So-Big Woods: The Little House Cafe – sqwawk

Duck or grouse: CLAWS – aarrrk … aarrrk

Dave Hubble’s ecology spot: Red-breasted Goose in Hampshire: twice in one day – chk chk chk

Research at a snail’s pace: Hawai’i Adventures: The Nene nene … nene … nene

Madras Ramblings: The Parambikulam poem – peep

North Shore Nature: Notes on the European Starling in a northern Ontario town – twitter

The Greenbelt: Valentine’s Day Birds squawk

Anybody Seen My Focus?: Yellow-rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata) – warble warble

IVORY-BILLS LiVE???!: — Review of The Crossley ID Guide — keKawww keKawwww

The Birders’ Report: The Red-breasted Sapsucker Guards Its Sap Wells – sipsipsip

Costa Rica Living and Birding: The Costa Rican Riverbird Flush – aarrk … aarrk

10,000 Birds: Good Gully: A Birder’s Oddity – tweet

Zoologirl’s Blog: Rapid Redpolls – chk chk chk tweet

Ben Cruachan – natural history: Breeding bonanza – woot woot woot

Island Nature: What was that Bird? – twitter tweet tweet and quack quack

Wanderin’ Weeta (With Waterfowl and Weeds): Bird silhouettes on tinted mud – ack ack ack …. ack ack ack

Very good. Now go back and do it again.

And, do be a good citizen and not only click on each and every link (until you get it right) but also post them of facebook and … dare I say it … tweet them as well!

The next I and the Bird web carnival will be at Island Nature. Click here for more information about I and the Bird and to volunteer to host upcoming editions.

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
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