Two years ago we read a disquieting statement in the New York Times. The writer recommended: “… go for a walk or a drive while listening to “Slow Radio,” a very soothing BBC podcast featuring sounds of the natural world.” Why listen to a podcast, we wondered, when you can go outside and hear the real thing.

May — month of the dawn chorus — is the perfect time to immerse yourself in melody. Not only are male birds proclaiming territories and seducing mates, but frogs are also sounding off and creeks and waterfalls are rippling and roaring.

For the best concerts, try to get away from traffic and airplanes. Even in noisy cities, however, birds make themselves heard. Many studies show that urban birds sing louder now than in the past, trying to be heard over the cacophony. Urban frog calls are also becoming louder and higher in pitch.

“Merlin,” a free phone app, can usually identify bird songs, chirps and calls. That’s helpful because most species have multiple vocalizations in addition to their primary song.

Western meadowlarks, for instance, have a repertoire of about a dozen primary songs, and Eastern Meadowlarks sing about a hundred.

To make it even more confusing, many species modify their songs over time, and mimics — mockingbirds, brown thrashers and yellow-breasted chats — sound like a full chorus coming out of just one throat.

Birders add words to the music in an effort to remember who is singing what. We were taught that olive-sided flycatchers say, “Quick, three beers” and yellowthroat warblers, “witchety-witchety-witchety.” We like to make up our own lyrics. For instance, we hear meadowlarks declaring, “I am prettier than you.” Raucous yellow-headed blackbirds are obviously calling “ko ko ko kopelli.” Or, perhaps, “Cococo cabana.”

Riparian trails around lakes and along streams are the best places to go for the greatest variety of bird and frog sounds. Plus, you get water music. Prairies, where the wind whispers through the grasses, are the preferred habitat for meadowlarks, bobolinks, and vesper sparrows. Higher elevation forests are where our favorite songster, the hermit thrush, seems to sing a duet with himself.

Here are some of our favorite places to walk and listen. Check online for location and more details.

• Walden and Sawhill Ponds, where chorus frogs sound off in the wetlands and returning orioles sing from the cottonwoods.• The Boulder Creek Path, where American dippers, one of the few birds to sing in winter, sometimes nest beneath the bridges.• Fairgrounds Lake, where the “Listening Stones” sculpture on St. Vrain Creek magnifies the sound of the water.• Stearns Lake, where we hear the first meadowlarks, often in January.

• Cherryvale Trailhead, where bobolinks and snipe call and display and where fireflies glitter in early July.• Brainard Lake area, where hermit thrushes nest in the spruce/fir forest and white-crowned sparrows nest on the tundra.

In this article we’ve used the masculine pronoun, because historically it was assumed that all singing birds were male. That’s not true. Many females also sing. In fact, the first cardinal we ever heard in Boulder some 40 years ago was a female.

By June, most birds are busy feeding young, and singing dwindles down.

Ruth Carol and Glenn Cushman are the authors of “Boulder Hiking Trails,” available from Amazon.