Universal Category System (UCS)

Birds – Avifaunistic – Ornithology

In this library, I gathered 250 clean recordings of songs & calls of some of the most common and some rare birds from Europe and Asia. Many of them also live in Africa (all year or during winter) and a few also live in Australia, New Zealand or America.

These recordings are ideal to fill in gaps in dialogue (as background sweetener), create authentic landscapes, to use as a original bird voice or to create creatures from pitching & editing the recordings. Bird vocalization is great to set a mood in a game or a movie. Use the nightingale to create a romantic atmosphere or use some gulls to create a place near the water.

The focus is on clean single bird song & call recordings.
All recordings (except one) have been made in the nature; of wild birds. Although I used a broad variety of techniques and technic and have been out in the meadows, woods, mountains, and riverbanks often as early as 3 am, on some recordings, due to the habitat these animals live in, there are other birds or other noise (of course very low in volume) in the background. Some recordings are heavily edited, to isolate the voice, so you can place the song in any ambiance, others didn’t need any editing except a simple low cut.

I also included a few ambiances where two or more bird species are dominant.

All recordings have the English, the scientific (Latin), and the German name in the metadata. I also included the distribution and the habitat. That way it will be easy for you to create an authentic soundscape depending on the region and landscape you are trying to represent in your media.

Another big part of the library is the “Build Your Own Bird” part.
I extracted single beeps, chirps, screams & pecking and you can easily build a very own bird species from these recordings, that are named with tonal information. So it is easier to build a sad or happy vocalization. Or a robot bird. I didn’t tune the chirps to allow more natural results when creating your own species. When playing along music, you should sometimes tune the sounds to the root key, given in the name of the file.

The 61 bird species voices included are:
Blackcap, Black Bird, Black Grouse, Black Headed Gull, Bluethroat, Blue Tit, Bullfinch, Canada Goose, Carrion Crow, Chiffchaff, Coal Tit, Cockatiel (Escape), Common Buzzard, Common Chaffinch, Common Kingfisher, Common Firecrest, Common Raven, Common Swift, Common Wood Pigeon, Corn Crake, Cuckoo, Coot, Dunnock, Eurasian Golden Oriole, Eurasian Nuthatch, Eurasian Oystercatcher, Eurasian Skylark, European Robin, Egyptian Goose, Gardenwarbler, Goldcrest, Great Tit, Greylag Goose, Great Cormorant, Great Crested Grebe, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Greater Flamingo, Greater White-Fronted Goose, Greenfinch, Grey Heron, House Sparrow, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Long-Tailed Tit, Mallard, Marsh Tit, Marsh Warbler, Nightingale, Northern Lapwing, Reed Warbler, Short Toed Treecreeper, Song Thrush, Spotted Flycatcher, Tawny Owl, Tree Pipit, Treecreeper, Tufted Duck, White Backed Woodpecker, White Wagtail, White Throat, Willow Warbler, Yellowhammer

There are also a few wings, flocks, pecking and recordings of juvenile birds included.

Please note, I respected the flight distance of all the birds, stayed on the path, and didn’t approach nests (I built a nesting box and included a lav and a long cable, I can only encourage to do the same). The recordings were made during countless sessions in Essen, Bottrop (Kirchheller Heide), Duesseldorf (Urdenbacher Kaempe), Zwillbrocker Venn, and Oberammergau.
In addition, I am not an ornithologist. I listened back to all recordings with the Macaulay Library to verify my classifications and checked with experts, were in doubt. I am confident, I got all of them right, but if you feel like a call or a song belongs to another bird species, please let me know.

If you are looking for a specific bird species please check the file sheet prior to buying. While most birds have multiple calls & songs in this library, some may have one file with a single call only.

The naming structure is compliant with the Universal Category System (UCS).