making a wooden bird whistle

[Gazz]

It's that time of year again, bloody cats are after the birds, and yet again i'm looking after a blackbird fledgling.

last year i taught the ones i rehabilitated to whistle using my lips, and we still hear them around the neigbourhood, the ones with a slightly different whistle to others (ok i taught one part of the colonel bogey march :)

so this year i thought i'd get one of those bird call whistles, usually sold to hunters to lure their prey in,

a blackbird one can be had for about a tenner, but it's only a bit of stick with a few holes in it,

so i want to have a go at making one, but never made anything musical before, i'm not sure whee to put the holes and to tune it to make the blackbird type shrill whistles, i know you have to roll your rrrrr's whilst whistling one to make some of the sounds a blackbird makes,

has anyone make a wooden blackbird or any song bird whistle before?? searching for 'plans' to make them isnt showing up much, all the sites selling them ready made are plastered all over google, along with the usual s**te google throws up nowadays.

[Gazz]

replying to my own message here...

just had a play on the lathe (little chinkie one, metal lathe, but you can turn wood into sawdust on a metal lathe, not that easy to turn metal into swarf on a wood working lathe :)

anyhoo, i made a simple whistle using some scrap pine i had, rounded the outer about an inch outer, bored the middle out about 3/4 inch to a depth of about 3/4 of the length, cut a wedge shape about an inch in, then rounded a plug to fit into the mouth, sanded a flat on it, and shoved it in,

took a little playing with it but i got it to make a note, fairly high pitch and very loud, but you had to blow hard, then i put it back in the lathe to embelish it, and knocked the mouth end off,

bit of super glue later, and it still works, looks absolute crap, but hey, i made a whistle,

now i need to figure out what's in the bird call whistles, i know theres one that has a chamber of water, to produce a warbeling sound, but the blackbird whistle seems to just use a pretty small mouth hole in a wide body, and then there's learning how to use it to make the different 'tunes' but i've gone as far as i can right now, no idea about the rest.

[Chris Hogg]

Not exactly a bird whistle, but it, or the other links listed, may give you some ideas.

google for water whistle (gives you that trilling sound).