Itchy and scratchy

16 Thursday May 2024

Tags

birding, birdwatching, British birds, Common whitethroat, mnemonic for bird song

As I was recently reminded by reading another blogger’s post, those of us who love birds each have our own ways of remembering their songs and calls. Every year, whenever I hear my first Common whitethroat, I immediately think ‘itchy and scratchy’. This is nothing to do with the animated television series, at least not in the sense of any comparison of sounds; rather it’s that the whitethroat’s song sounds very scratchy to me and my mind jumps to the word association of itchy with scratchy. The Common whitethroat pictured below was belting out his scratchy song with gusto and enthusiasm in his efforts to attract a mate.

240521 common whitethroat

Wild word: mnemonic

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#WildWords, birding, birdwatching, British birds, mnemonic, mnemonic for bird song, ways to remember bird songs, wild words

Mnemonic: Noun; a system such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations which assists in remembering something; from the Greek mnēmonikos, from mnēmōn, meaning ‘mindful’ (Oxford Dictionary).

I’ve found mnemonics particularly useful when trying to remember bird songs. Apart from the very obvious sounds, where the bird is, in fact, named for its song – I’m thinking here of the Chiffchaff and the Kittiwake – there are also some well-known phrases that many birders know, like ‘a little bit of bread and no cheeeeese’ for the song of the Yellowhammer, ‘chissick’ for the Pied wagtail, and ‘teacher, teacher’ for the Great tit. Do you have any bird song mnemonics you can share?