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HOW TO LEARN BIRD SONGS (LOTS OF THEM...) SO YOUR NEXT BIRDING TRIP CAN BE A LOT MORE FUN

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

One of the great joys of birding comes from walking thru the woods during a spring warbler fallout and hearing all of our “old friends” singing again. Our heightened awareness, coupled with the recognition of all of the songs we hear around us, is very rewarding. But when we travel to a new birding destination that sense of knowing what we are hearing is usually replaced by frustration and confusion. No longer do we recognize the birds that are singing. Instead we are confronted with a cacophony of sound that gives us no map of the birds around us, and no clear way to focus on which species we might want to pursue.

After experiencing this frustration years ago during a trip to Ecuador, I vowed that, before my next trip, I would try and find a way to learn as many bird songs as I could. My goal was to have that same satisfying sense of recognition I have during our spring migration. I wanted to be able to create a clear audio map of the birds singing around me. I knew that this would make the birding more satisfying, and would also help me find the key birds I wanted to see.

My own memory is nothing special. I don’t remember many birthdays, people’s names are forever escaping me, and I’ve lost plenty of keys, gloves and umbrellas. So I knew my work was cut out for me. I began with a brief study of how the memory works, researching what skills I might acquire that would help me with the memorization process. I then worked out a system specific to learning bird songs. Using this system I have been able to learn 300 or 400 songs for each of my last several trips to Africa, South America and Asia. Knowing many of the local songs made these trips much more fulfilling and exciting for me, and was definitely well worth the time and energy spent. More importantly, I discovered that it really didn’t take as long as I feared it might to learn all of those songs.

In this article I’d like to discuss what techniques I have found to be helpful in this process and to offer suggestions and encouragement to anyone who might want to add learning an area’s songs to their trip preparation list. Along the way I’ll talk about some of the myths surrounding memory, and what tricks and techniques have been proven successful for all types of memorization. I’ll also mention some of the new technologies that help make learning bird songs much easier now than it was in the “old days”.


THE BENEFITS
There are many benefits to trying to learn the songs for your next trip. First of all, the process of learning the area’s songs will enhance your field guide studies and help you achieve a “no-bird-book-needed” skill level for your trip.

Another benefit is that knowing what you are hearing can help you focus on the area’s target birds, and avoid pursuing more common birds that you have already seen.

And of course if you are on a trip with a leader, you can gain a better perspective on their familiarity with the region. The first trip I took, after embarking on my quest to learn in advance as many songs as possible, was Bolivia. I went in a group led by one of the top birding companies. The guide was quite good, but more than a bit arrogant…On one occasion I heard a certain Tinamou whose song I had learned. I mentioned it to our guide who replied that it couldn’t have been that species and that he had never seen one ever in Bolivia. The second guide and I stayed back, called in the Tinamou, and had a lifer for everyone in the group. That morning we ended up locating six more of these birds singing along the trail. Talk about satisfying...

Of course another important benefit is that the skills you develop and practice learning bird songs can be used for any type of memorization you might need in other areas of life.


THE EXCUSES
When speaking with people about learning more bird songs, I’ve heard a lot of excuses. “I’d love to, but my memory isn’t very good.” “I just couldn’t spend the hours and hours of time needed to learn so many songs.” “It would be great but it took me 10 years just to learn the warblers here in my own back yard.” “I’m too old to remember so much anymore. Maybe 20 years ago....”

Let me emphasize right now that it doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think to learn one hundred or two hundred bird songs. If you can dedicate 15 minutes a day for a month, I guarantee that you can learn at least 100 songs and probably many more (or your money back..!). That’s way less time than you probably spend watching commercials on TV. And if you commute to work, you probably have a lot more time than that available.
The key is making the commitment and then taking advantage of the techniques and technologies that make learning lots of bird songs possible. And by the way, as you’ll see from the studies sited below, you can do it no matter what your age.


THE REALITIES OF MEMORY
Let’s take a quick look at some of the myths and facts of memory and memorizing. Fortunately, there have been a lot of studies done on this topic, since memory skills are so important to many areas of life.

One of the common myths these studies have “busted” is that the ability to memorize a lot of facts or associations is an innate inherited ability that only a special few possess. This position is reinforced by public showings of “memory experts” who can reproduce the telephone number of anyone in the NYC phone book, or tell you the day of the week of any date in the last 1000 years. This reinforces the feeling held by many people that they just don’t have the ability to memorize lots of facts or names…or lots of bird songs.

In fact, in study after study, it has been shown that almost all people have the same basic capacity for memory. “The capacity of your memory is a function of the memory techniques you use more than a function of any innate differences in memory ability.”* In other words, it’s much more likely that you have bad memorizing techniques than that you have a “bad” memory.

And by the way, there is no such thing as a “photographic memory”. Several studies have focused on people who had well developed memorization skills and were able to reproduce information from magazine pages in an almost “photographic” way. However when presented with these same pages turned sideways or upside down, they were not able to recall much information at all…So much for photographic memories. They just had well developed memorization skills.

And age isn’t the handicap that it has been made out to be. Many studies have shown that, while it takes people older than 50 a bit longer to memorize things, the retention ability of old and young people seem to be about the same**.

There’s also a myth that by learning some things you are removing other things from your memory; the first in, first out myth. This is similar to the myth that there may be some detrimental (pun intended...) effect from trying to memorize too much. Both of these myths just aren’t true. Many studies have shown that people seem to have an unlimited capacity to memorize, given the motivation and proper technique**.


BASIC MEMORY THEORY
People who have studied memory have found a range of techniques and skills that aid in the memorization process. For example, research has shown that memorized connections are stronger and easier to recall if visual imagery is used. Let’s say you want to associate the words fish and bicycle (no doubt an association you have had to make at some point in your life...) Rather than just repetitively reviewing this association, or repeating the two words over and over; it’s better for stronger retention to create a visual image of these two objects you are trying to associate. In other words, visualizing a fish trying to ride a bicycle is much more effective for the recall process than just repeating “fish, bicycle; fish, bicycle”. And the more associations you make the stronger the memory will be. If you can add a second image of your neighbor riding a bicycle bringing home a fish the memory will be stronger. This discovery about the technique of visualization for stronger memorization applies particularly well to the abstract process of trying to associate a song and the name of a bird.

Another key discovery is that for effective memorization, the management of time is extremely important. Most loss of memory happens within the first few minutes of the learning process**. So an effective memorization technique must include a review of the associations and images you have created fairly soon after the first attempt to memorize them. And “testing” the memory often and soon after the first associations increases the pathways for retrieval and is an important part of learning things quickly.

This testing process is really the key to memorization success. When learning bird songs you must actively recall the name yourself. That means you must not listen to the name of the bird before hearing its song during the testing process. This is critical. And you must test yourself very soon after learning a few songs.

Learning also takes place more efficiently if you take things in small “bites”. The process of starting with just a few associations, testing them very soon after the first session, and then having frequent additional reviews, has proven itself in many studies to be very effective in learning any group of associations**. This sequence is the core process I’ve used for memorizing many bird songs.

The importance of taking things in small bits with immediate review also applies to studying bird ID using a field guide. Let’s say you have 15 minutes to study the ID plates for a new country you are going to visit. If you use those 15 minutes to go through the first 20 pages of the book, looking carefully at the species on each page, you will probably remember some of the birds the next day. But you’ll probably find that a few days later, when you look back over those first pages, most of the bird species are a pretty fuzzy.

Your species retention will be much stronger if you concentrate on only the first 3 or 4 pages, going over the birds several times, and then reviewing each page two or three times while testing yourself on the names. Using this method you can learn all or most of the birds on those few pages in that first session, with only minimal subsequent review required. This is a much more efficient way to learn the birds for a trip than going over the first 20 pages once each session, over the course of several sessions separated by a couple of days or more.

By the way, what word do you associate with the word “fish”?


THE GOAL
So here’s a summary of our mission.

• We want to learn a lot of bird songs for our next trip.
• We need to find a way to associate the name of the bird with its song.
• We must break the task into groups of just a few songs and make strong visual associations between each song and the bird’s name
• We must review these associations soon after we first make them and almost immediately test ourselves to strengthen the connections
• We must then briefly test ourselves on the learned songs regularly over the next few days while learning other new songs.

Sounds easy, right! So let’s get started.


THE TOOLS
Here’s what you’ll need to begin the song-learning process.

GET A LIST OF THE BIRDS IN THE TARGET REGION
First, gather a complete list of all of the birds you are likely to see in the area you are visiting. Usually this is available from the birding tour company if you’re using one. If you’re not using a group you will have to put one together yourself by reviewing range maps in the field guides for the area or checking the internet for available lists.
Of course you would need this list to learn the birds visually as well. The goal is to learn all of the birds you might encounter, but you definitely don’t want to spend time learning songs you don’t need!


FIND THE SONGS FOR YOUR TARGET BIRDS
This is really the hardest part of the job. Fortunately, in the past few years, there have been a lot of tapes and CDs published with bird songs from many parts of the world. There are now fairly complete collections of songs for Europe and Southern Africa, and more and more are coming all the time for South and Central America and Asia. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, for example, has published a collection of all of the Antbirds of the Americas and is planning more releases for South America in the future. There are also collections of New World Owls, Nightjars, Cuckoos, Thrushes, Wrens and other families.

It’s a bit of work to collect the songs you’ll need, but of course each subsequent trip will be easier.


LOAD THE SONGS ONTO SOME KIND OF RANDOM ACCESS PLAYBACK DEVICE
Next you need to get all of these songs on your computer or some kind of random-access playback device.
I want to make the strong statement that you can forget about learning a lot of songs quickly if you’re using a cassette player. It’s just not possible! A CD player is much better than a cassette, and can be great for reviewing songs, but is still not the best for learning, as the song order is fixed and the original CDs will most likely contain birds you don’t need to learn.

FOR A STREAMLINED LEARNING PROCESS, USE ITUNES
For this article I’ll discuss using Apple’s free program iTunes for the learning process. This program is very good, works with iPods and some other MP3 players, and can be used to burn CDs for the testing process if you want to listen in your car.

You can actually do all of your learning right in iTunes if you can schedule to be near your computer for a few minutes a day. (And I’ll bet that most of us are trying to find ways to schedule how to be less near our computer every day…so the opportunity is right in front of us most of the time!)

I’m not going to give a complete tutorial on how to use iTunes in this article. If you haven’t used it before, just download it and give it a try. It’s a very simple, easy-to-use program. And there are a lot of answers to FAQs on its operation available on the internet.

Here’s where to download iTunes if you don’t have it already.
And no, you don’t have to own an iPod to use it!
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

SOME iTUNES FEATURES
PLAYLISTS
iTunes has one “master” library list containing all of the songs loaded into the program. Using songs from this list you can then create many “playlists” or smaller collections of the songs you want to study. One song can be in several different playlists.

You’ll need to make many playlists, of 5-10 bird songs each, when you get started. Later you can create more custom playlists for testing yourself. The initial playlists should contain bird songs from the same family or maybe from the same page in your field guide. Once you have learned a number of songs you can create custom lists that include only songs that are high pitched, or only songs that descend in pitch. This kind of testing really helps you learn the songs well. More on this later.

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SHUFFLE
iTunes (and iPods) have one feature that is very important for the testing process: Song Shuffle. When you begin testing yourself on the songs in a playlist, you need to “shuffle” the order each time you listen to the playlist. Otherwise you will just learn the order of the list!
To “shuffle” the order of a playlist, highlight it in iTunes and select SHUFFLE under the CONTROLS menu at the top of your screen. Then every time you select that playlist the playback order of the songs will be randomly changed.

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REMOVING THE NAMES
When you are testing yourself on the songs you are learning it is absolutely essential that you not hear the name of the song until you have provided it yourself. If you try and learn songs that are preceded by the bird’s name it will take you a lot longer!

Unfortunately, many CDs and tapes of bird songs have a voice proclaiming the name of the bird in advance of its song. During the memorization process you must either edit this out or mute this voice during the testing process. Before loading the songs into iTunes I usually edit them using an audio editor like Cakewalk’s Sonar. This step isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does make the learning process a bit easier and definitely helps with playback in the field.

Not hearing the name during the testing process is absolutely essential!! Using the computer’s mute button when playing songs back in iTunes provides a fairly easy way to remove the spoken name of the bird when you are testing yourself. Here’s a typical process for testing yourself on playlist of songs:

• Mute the computer
• Hit the Space Bar to play the song
• Wait a second and then unmute the audio
• Listen to the song and guess the name
• Hit your computer’s Left Arrow to instantly rewind to the start of the song and check the spoken name of the bird, or look at the name in the playlist.
• Don’t cheat!

If you want to learn songs or test yourself when you’re away from the computer you can easily use an iPod or a CD player. One thousand 30 second to 2 minute bird songs in iTune’s AAC format take up well less than 1 gig of memory. So a 4-gig iPod mini or any other iPod will work fine. Other MP3 players can work as well. You may have to convert the files to MP3 format to load them into another MP3 player, but this is very easy using iTunes. You can also burn CDs of different playlists for review and testing in a car or when you are away from your computer.


SUMMARY: RANDOM ACCESS IS KEY
Using a random access program like iTunes is essential for learning a lot of songs quickly. You can easily shuffle the order of the songs each time you test yourself. You can also quickly reference another bird song if you mistakenly attribute one bird to another’s song. And making special groupings or playlists of similar songs for further study and testing is easy and very effective.

As mentioned above, don’t even attempt to learn a lot of songs if you’re using a cassette tape, unless, of course, you have a huge amount of time on your hands…

By the way, if I say “fish” what word comes to mind?


THE LEARNING PROCESS
FIRST LOAD ALL OF YOUR SONGS INTO iTUNES
After setting up iTunes on your computer, load all of the songs you can find for your target region into the program. I like to load them into a master playlist titled “Target Country Master Song List”. From this master list you’ll create the very small playlists for the song-learning process.

Loading CDs into iTunes is very easy. It was designed for this process. If you are connected to the internet when you put the CD into your computer, iTunes will search out the CD’s unique ID number and automatically load the name of all of the songs on the disc. Very convenient!

In a subsequent column I’ll talk about how to transfer cassettes to iTunes, which requires a couple of additional steps and an audio interface and simple audio editing program.


GET STARTED BY MAKING PLAYLISTS OF 5-10 SONGS EACH
After you’ve loaded as many target songs as possible into a master playlist in iTunes, the next step is to group 5-10 similar songs together using iTunes playlists. Don’t try and group too many together in one list. Learning goes much faster if you take the process in small steps!
If you press the + button in the bottom LH corner of the iTunes window a new playlist will be created. You just drag songs from your master country playlist or the “music” library file that includes everything you’ve loaded into iTunes, right into one of the playlists. Double click the playlist’s name to rename it.

One way to help reinforce the songs and the visual image of the bird is to put together playlists based on one or two pages of the main field guide you will be using for the trip. But be sure not to include any birds that don’t occur in the areas you will be visiting. No need to make the job tougher!

This all may sound like a big task, but in reality you can assemble all of the playlists you’ll need for your trip easily in an hour or two once you have the source materials.

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SCHEDULE YOUR TIME
Now that you’ve got all of your songs in iTunes arranged in many small playlists the real memory work begins.
For best results, you need to focus completely on this task, so at least at first you need to dedicate time to learning the songs. As you learn more songs and get more familiar with the process you can begin to use your time commuting to work or other less focused time. But it’s definitely best to start with small bits of dedicated time. I’d recommend the following schedule:

• 4-5 minutes for the first run through
• Short break
• Second, faster run through
  Don’t play the whole song, just a phrase or two
• Very short break of a minute or two
• Your first testing session.
  Play back the songs without the names and remember the image you created and the bird’s name.
  Check the name.
• Shuffle the playlist
• Take an additional 2 minutes a couple more times during the day to retest the first playlist’s songs played back in a random order.

• Break the master list of all of the trip bird songs into very small groups or playlists of 5-10 songs
• Start with one group only
• Play the songs one at a time and find an image that naturally occurs to you when you hear that song
• Find a way to associate that image with the name of the bird
• Test yourself within 10 minutes by playing back the songs in random order
• Repeat this process a couple of times, if necessary
• Once you can name all of the songs accurately, take a break or start on a new list
• Review each learned list briefly at least twice a day. The faster you are at recalling the image/bird song name, the faster this process becomes.
• If there are songs you misidentify often, put them in a “problem song” playlist.
• Once you have learned 5 or 10 playlists, create new playlists that group similar-sounding birds together.
• Test yourself on these playlists along with the original lists and update them with additional birds as you learn more.
  These lists can be much longer than the original “first learning” playlists, as they are songs you already know.
• Review learned playlists two or three times a week

A FEW MORE SUGGESTIONS
For your initial playlists, start with 6 or 7 songs from a family whose songs are fairly simple and repetitive. I’d suggest maybe the antbirds, owls or nightjars, because, although some species may have a couple of songs, most have one standard song that is simple and easy to define. As long as the bird’s song is repetitive, it’s fairly easy to create an image for that song you can associate with the name. If the bird’s song is extremely varied (mimics, some thrushes, etc) then they can be harder to learn.

When you first start with a playlist, take a few minutes and play through all of the songs in that group. After each song, stop and try and create an association or image connecting the name and the shape or quality of the song. What does that song remind you of? Is there an image that leaps to mind that you can work with to create a song/name link?
Once you have an image for one song go on to the next. If an image doesn’t present itself fairly quickly go to the next song.

Go through the list a couple of times, creating images for songs that need one and recalling the ones you have already created. As soon as you can recall the image, stop playing the song and go to the next one. Don’t play the song over and over. The key is to find the image/association, test it and then move on.

Be sure to reinforce the name/song association each time you hear the song by clearly repeating it to yourself. It can also help to actually say the bird’s name out loud along with the associated image.

After 5 minutes or so with a new playlist you should have images for most of the songs. Once you do, concentrate on the couple you don’t have images for. If you can’t think of anything for one or two don’t worry and don’t spend too much time trying to get one. You can leave them in that song list or move them to a “difficult song” list for later work.
For tougher songs, I’ve found that an image may not appear for a few sessions, and then all of a sudden you’ll find one that works.

After going over the playlist a few times and forming associations, take a short break of 3-5 minutes and then play back the songs but without looking at or listening to the names. As mentioned above, for this testing to be effective you must not hear the name of the bird, but rather you must actively have to come up with it yourself. If the name of the bird is presented at the beginning of its song by the person who recorded it, then turn the volume down or use the computer’s mute button for a second when you start each selection.

After a couple of repetitions you should use iTune’s “Shuffle” command as mentioned above for each playlist before starting the testing process. Once you have selected Shuffle for a playlist it will create a random order each time you come back to that list. This is essential for learning the songs quickly. It’s sometimes easier to learn the order of the list than it is to learn the song/name association!

Believe it or not, you will remember most of the songs from your first list within a couple of repetitions and a test or two. It’s actually surprising how fast songs are to learn if you come up with an effective image. Some you may not remember. If that’s the case, then play only those tougher songs once or twice, without the name, and see if you get any associations or images from just the song. If so, then look at the name and make a connection between the image the song presents and the name. If not, leave them.

Take a short break and then review one more time.

If possible, take three or four minutes later that day and test yourself again. Play the songs in a shuffled order, without the names, and see if you remember them. You most likely will. Each time you identify the bird, repeat to yourself the image association and the name of the bird, preferably out loud.
Review any mistakes.

Probably the most important part of this learning process is to test yourself very soon after learning the songs. It doesn’t have to take very long, maybe 1 or 2 minutes. But this immediate testing is critical to the learning process. As mentioned above, you lose most of your learned associations within the first couple of hours unless you reinforce them.

If you have the opportunity, take your bird book and find the pictures of the birds you just studied. Look at the picture in the book and remember your image and its association with the bird’s name. Try and visualize the song, and sing it if you can.

The next day, quickly review the songs you learned from the day before. Again, be sure to review by playing the song without the name and in a random order, and then check to see if you’ve correctly identified the song.

Now create a new list with 5-10 more songs and start the process again.

Continue this process with a day’s break here and there, until you’ve done 10 sessions, for 60-100 birds. I’ll bet this won’t take nearly as long, or be as remotely as difficult as you might have thought!


REFINING AND ADDING TO YOUR LISTS
After a week or two you’ll know at least 60 or 70 songs well and have some clunkers that are tough to nail down. To help learn the harder songs, create a new list of the songs that are tough and include also any other songs that need more review. Keep this list as the active review list and put the rest away to be reviewed two or three times a week.

The lists of well-learned songs are great to test yourself on as you go to work. You can burn a CD of a couple of the lists or use your iPod for testing yourself away from the computer.
If you use a CD, here’s a process to “randomize” your playback. Start with the first song, turn down the volume for a second to miss the spoken name of the bird, then listen to the song and guess. Hit REW once to get to the top of the track to check the name. Then the FF button briefly 3 times. This will put you at the 4^th song. Test yourself, check, hit the FF button 3 times again and continue. Once you get to the end of the CD, start with the second song and continue the process again. This will generate a sequence of song 2, song 5, song 8, etc. At the end of the CD start again with song 3 for a sequence of song 3, 6, 9, etc.
The next time you use that CD, hit the FF button 2 times or 4 times each sequence. That ensures that you’re learning the songs and not the order of the songs! It also ensures that you’ll test yourself on all of the songs.

When reviewing, remember to never play the name with the song. Play just the song and force yourself to actively come up with the name of the bird. This is the key to learning the songs.
You can also look through the species lists for the families you have been learning and again speak the image you are using for the song connection and try and visualize or sing the song.

By the way, as a more real life corollary for this “speaking-out-loud” technique, try saying out loud “I’m putting my car keys on the kitchen table” the next time you put your keys down. By creating this auditory connection, there is a much greater likelihood that you’ll remember where they are the next time you need them...*

If I say “fish” what word should you say??


MAKE GROUPINGS OF SIMILAR SOUNDING SONGS
Once you have learned 50-100 songs you should begin to compile new groupings of your learned songs. This is fairly important. It may be easy, for example, to identify a particular antbird when you know your choices are all taken from a playlist of antbirds. But out in the field you won’t know what grouping a song is in. And there may be similar sounding birds from widely different families or playlists.
These new groups should contain like-sounding songs, for example, groups of songs that rise only, songs that rise and fall, or songs that descend. This will help you test yourself with songs that could be confusing in the field.

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If you make a mistake when testing yourself with these lists, immediately review the song for the species you mistook for the original (isn’t random access great!). You can then see why you made the mistake and what the difference is between the songs. Put the song you thought was the answer in the same playlist with the original for future testing.

After learning a number of songs you may need to “tweak” your image a bit to differentiate between two similar songs. For example, Rusty-Margined Flycatcher (Miozetetes cayanensis) and Dusky-capped Flycatchers (Myiarchus tuberculifer) both have whistles that rise and fall. So your initial image for these birds would probably have related to the rising and falling of the songs. For example the Dusky-capped Flycatcher might be the image of a flycatcher tossing its cap up into the air and watching it rise and fall. For the Rusty-margined Flycatcher it could have been a buffer polishing the rust from the margin of a wall going up then down (I told you these images are personal...!).

Both of these songs rise and fall. They may have been easy to identify in one playlist as they were the only rising and falling song for that list. However in the field you could be hearing either bird. So you may need to adjust the images to add another parameter to differentiate the rising and falling song of the RM from the DC. Otherwise you won’t know which bird to associate with a rising or falling song.
The Rusty-margined’s song is thinner than the Dusky-capped. So you can add to the R-M Flycatcher’s song image a second image of a rust thinning out as it is “buffed” to help differentiate its thinner song from the heavier song and heavier “cap” of the D-K Flycatcher.
If those two songs aren’t in your “similar species” playlist, add them.

You can also compile lists of songs for one area, or just dump all of the songs randomly into one big list. That, of course, is the ultimate test.



THE GREAT NEWS, THE BAD NEWS AND THE GOOD NEWS
When you go on your trip, the great news is that you will feel immediately at home in your new environment. You will recognize songs and be able to begin targeting birds you want to see. In some cases, it may take a repetition or two to “tune” your ear to the natural song versus the taped song you have been listening to on your computer. But this adjustment is usually fairly fast. I guarantee that it will be very exciting when you ID your first singing antbird or any other target species you have been studying!

The bad news is that some species will have alternate songs or variations that you didn’t have on your source material, so you will still be stuck with some unidentified songs. [Check out my last column on how to attract these birds and identify them.]

But the good news again is that the song-learning techniques you have been developing will help you quickly learn these new songs, making your birding experience much more fulfilling and fun!

Once you get home, with your trip list expanded by all of the birds you heard and identified from your studies, you’ll be really excited to start the process again for your next trip.

And of course the skills you have acquired learning these songs will be available for any other memory tasks you might have at hand.

By the way, if I say “fish”….



References
* Your Memory: How it Works and How to Improve it by Kenneth L Higbee
** cf studies listed in Your Memory by Kenneth Higbee, The Memory Book by H Lorayne and J Lucas, How the Brain Learns by Sousa

SEND ME YOUR IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS

This is a column, not a forum, and unfortunately I’m not going to be able to directly answer most emails. However, if you have specific questions about something that was covered in a column, please do send me a note. If something that I covered needs further explanation, I’ll try and provide that in a future column.

I will also welcome and consider any suggestions for topics that might be of interest to the general birding community, especially areas of technology that you might like to explore, but feel you may need more information or some “how-tos” to get started.

I’ll do my best to cover as many of these topics as possible.

Send your comments, suggestions and (kind) thoughts to

TomsTips@Surfbirder.com

© 2007 Tom Stephenson