When I first set out to learn bird language many years ago, I made the mistake of listening to bird call recordings around the same time that I decided to learn Chinese. And so I drove to work every day listening first to Mandarin and then to Peterson’s Birding by Ear , and ended up mixing the tones of the different languages, that while clear enough to the birds and the Chinese, left me confused and discouraged. I have pretty much given up my fantasy of learning Chinese, and lately, I have