Dawn Chorus Game

A song rings out at daybreak, and four birds sit on a bare branch. Which one is singing? Birders remember songs with phrases that fit their rhythm, such as the Eastern Towhee's drink your tea. The game plays a real recording of each song, offers its phrase as a hint, and shows the phrase again with the bird's name after every answer, so the sound, the words and the bird are learned together.

How to play

1. A bird sings. Four birds sit on the branch, each with its number and name.
2. Listen, then tap the one that is singing, or press its number, 1 to 4. AGAIN plays the song from the start as often as you like.
3. Stuck? HINT shows the phrase birders use to remember that song. The song then scores half.
4. After every answer, right or wrong, the singer's name and its phrase show together. A wrong answer plays the song once more. 3 misses end the game.

The game is played by ear, so it needs sound. Sound starts off on a first visit, and the start screen has a button that turns it on. Every bird of the region sings once, in a shuffled order, before any sings again, and the four on the branch change with every song. On a keyboard, press 1 to 4 to pick a bird, R to hear the song again and H for the hint. Escape or Space pauses.

Scoring

• A song named without the hint scores 100 points.
• Each song named in a row before it adds 20, up to 100 more, so the fifth song in a row scores 180 and a long run scores 200 a song.
• The hint halves what the song scores.
• A wrong answer scores nothing and ends the run.

Your five best scores are saved in this browser, with the song each game reached. In practice, misses are not counted and the game never ends on its own. End it from the pause screen. Practice games are not saved.

The phrases

A phrase like drink your tea is a mnemonic in the same sense as the ones this site teaches for numbers and names: a sound with no meaning of its own is turned into words that are easy to keep, and the words carry the rhythm back. Songs vary between birds and places, so a phrase is a guide to the rhythm, not a transcript. These are the birds of North America the game plays, with the phrase it gives each one.

• Eastern Towhee: drink your tea
• Barred Owl: who cooks for you, who cooks for you all
• Carolina Wren: teakettle, teakettle, teakettle
• White-throated Sparrow: Old Sam Peabody, Peabody
• Ovenbird: teacher, teacher, teacher
• Red-eyed Vireo: here I am, where are you
• American Robin: cheerily, cheer up
• Northern Cardinal: birdie, birdie, birdie

The songs are short clips cut from recordings shared on Wikimedia Commons. Each is credited, with its licence, on the credits page.

Read about what a mnemonic is, or try our other free memory games.