Like many others in the village, I enjoy a bit of bird-watching every now and then. I’m no great shakes behind the binoculars but I can reliably tell apart the various species that come into the garden or that I see around the village.

All well and good, but I’ve never been able to tell them apart by listening to them. Over the years I’ve made the occasional half-hearted effort with a couple of bird-song CDs but have never found it easy to remember the sounds afterwards. So, many’s the time I’ve heard a bird singing and thought, “That’s a blackbird. I’m sure it’s a blackbird. I think it’s a blackbird. It could be a blackbird. Or, maybe it’s a robin.” Hmmm... I can’t be the only one.

Anyway, a quick and handy solution presented itself out of the blue one morning in an email from a work colleague for whom bird-watching became a bit of a Covid hobby. ‘Hi Guy – just found this fun app – records birds singing and tells you what they are – doesn’t cost a penny – easy to use.” Well, this did sound rather more interesting than the rest of the morning’s email traffic and it has to be said that ‘doesn’t cost a penny’ did have an attractive sound to it. I think the ‘easy to use’ bit was a kind way of saying ‘even you could probably manage it, Guy’.

But no matter. In a rare moment of spontaneous and decisive action I downloaded it onto my phone, not entirely unsupervised by my daughter (from whom the phone may possibly have been a hand-medown) although I’m pretty sure I could have managed it on my own.

And it is indeed a very straightforward bit of kit. Essentially, you hear a bird singing, press a record button, stop it after a few seconds, tell it to analyse the recording and after a moment or two the result comes back. You can keep onto the recording or delete it, as you wish.

So, armed accordingly, off I went round the bits of the village that seemed most promising, making a fistful of recordings as I went. And an interesting experience it has been. The first thing is that the commonest birds I’ve heard aren’t always the commonest ones you see. There are of course plenty of robins – no doubt about that – but similarly plentiful are wrens and chiff-chaffs. The last of these in particular are very easy to identify once you’ve got your ear in and then you hear them everywhere, even though they’re not so easy to spot.

It’s also become clear that populations are quite territorial – there are certain areas where I know there will be a lot of wrens (or maybe just one or two noisy ones, I suppose) and others where it’s all chiff-chaffs, and so on. And dunnocks may be a bit boring to look at but they’re pretty good to listen to.

Every once in a while, something a bit more unusual has come my way. So, one day recently, walking along the stretch of canal between the Navigation and the Soar Bridge (it wasn’t a pub crawl you understand, I’m just fixing the location...) I got a couple of recordings of a Blackcap – not at all uncommon but we don’t see them often in our garden and I couldn’t see it in the trees above, so without the app I would never have known it was there.

And a quick closing word on bird-song apps more broadly. I’m sure there are plenty out there, doing much the same thing and maybe better in some cases. The only thing I would add is that it’s worth checking that whatever you go for recognises European species (which this one does). I hear tell from others that at least some of the apps developed in North America aren’t so good on this.

And can I now tell the difference between a blackbird and a robin? Yes, absolutely. Every time. Usually. I think. Hmmm... a fair way to go to be honest. But it’s fun, and chiff-chaffs really are dead easy.

If you are interested in downloading the free App go to: https://birdnet.cornell.edu/

Guy Silk