Boat-billed Flycatcher, Horto Florestal de São Paulo, Brazil. Photo by Dario Sanches (Creative Commons 2.0). Click for link.
I just published my first feature article for Xeno-Canto. I figured I should give their blogging functionality a try, and I’m happy with the result. My subject is geographic differences in the vocalizations of the Boat-billed Flycatcher (Megarynchus pitangua), a Central and South American species that looks much like the Great Kiskadee of south Texas.
For reasons I explained in my recent post on hybrid flycatchers, vocal differences in flycatchers are likely to represent strong genetic differences. I noticed some time ago that Boat-billed Flycatchers in Central America make some distinctive sounds that Boat-billed Flycatchers in South America don’t make, and vice versa. I thought I would be able to write a quick feature recommending a split — a la my Gray Hawk posts [12] — but as I started writing, I realized that Boat-billed Flycatchers make a number of different sounds, some of them geographically variable, others apparently not. It took me far longer to complete my project than I anticipated, which is one of the reasons why you’ve seen Earbirding go so long without a new post!
So head on over to Xeno-Canto’s feature page to check out my work. As always, I’d love to hear what you think!
Wrong sense of the word "hack," unfortunately. Photo by Angus Kirk (Creative Commons 2.0).
Apologies to all of you who have been trying to access the site for the past 5 days — Earbirding got hacked. (It was my own fault for not updating my installation of WordPress on a regular basis. Those of you who run WordPress blogs, let this be a lesson — always update on schedule!) As far as I can tell, the hack was only of a spam-link nature and it didn’t destroy any content — nor did it harm any visitor computers, as far as I know.
Most of the site is back online as of this morning, but certain links, iframes, etcetera may remain broken. If you find anything that isn’t working, please let me know.
Meanwhile, classes have ended for the semester and I’m now in the grading morass, but at least it’s a self-scheduled morass, and I hope to be bringing you some fine new content soon: upcoming blog topics include hybrid birds, hearing loss, Whip-poor-wills, Warbling Vireos, and annoying spectrograms.
The title of this blog post is a little misleading – while both websites have warbler themed names, the real purpose of this blog is to announce two new nature sound resources. The first website I’m announcing today is Dendroica, a new identification resource for North American birds. Originally released back in 2007 on CD, it has just come to the web. Under their acknowledgments they state their main purpose as an “interactive training program developed originally to aid participants of the Breeding Bird Survey and other scientific surveys of Canadian bird species such as Breeding Bird Atlases to develop their bird song identification skills.”
The usefulness of this website extends far beyond those audiences, though. First you have to register as a user and get a username and password. Then the user can select one of three countries – Canada, the United States, and Mexico – to start, and then select from a list of species that occur in that country. For the US and Canada that list is near complete (I only noticed a few peripheral species not included, like Spectacled Eider). For Mexico there is obviously a lot of work to do, but hopefully the holes will be filled in as work on the site goes forward.
Once the user selects a species they are presented with sound recordings and photos of the selected species. The amount of audio Dendroica has is truly impressive, and draws from a wide variety of sources. Included are many species and many vocalizations not available elsewhere on the web, and the quality is universally excellent. At the moment coverage of some species is a little sparse, but presumably work is ongoing, and as more contributions are made this could become just about the most comprehensive collection of US bird songs available for free on the internet.
The little blurb below the photo gives a brief description of the primary song, and in some cases variation in song and calls. The source and documentation for the selected recording is shown just below this.
One other available feature that many users will find useful is a “quiz” button. Clicking this will give you a random sound and a list of possible answers.
Features I would really like to see Dendroica implement include more notes on what each recording includes. As it is you have to search the recordings for calls and alternate sounds/subspecies variation. If it were me, I’d divide the recordings up by vocalization type and subspecies. It would also be nice if there was more information on geographical and vocal variation.
I also find the automatic playing of one of the sounds when you select a new species account to be highly annoying, but that is in part personal preference. There are very few errors that I was able to find, quite an accomplishment when this many sounds/photos are in one place (but I also didn’t go through with a fine-toothed comb). What they have down for Omao (a Hawaiian Myadestes species) as song is actually the song of Brown-backed Solitaire, and another is that the recording they have for Black-capped Gnatcatcher either has a mislabeled location (California), or is mis-identified.
All in all I really like Dendroica, and highly recommend it.
Rufous-backed Inca-Finch, January 24, 2010, Ancash, Peru. Copyright Ian Davies.
The other new site I’m writing about here is my own, vermivora.com. I’ve just started working on it, and it’s still very much a work in progress. The main focus will be Neotropical, and will include photos, sounds, and trip reports from there and anywhere my travels take me.
The main focus of the sound part of vermivora, at the moment, will be sounds that I can’t post to xeno-canto (mammals, reptiles, and amphibians), and the “project” page. There I plan to post pages rather like the ID and taxonomy article posted here, but with a neotropical focus. Eventually this page will also include other sound resources of a tropical nature.
For an idea of what I’m talking about, take a look at the page on Inca-Finch vocalizations I posted. I probably won’t be adding new information as often as the earbirding blog is updated, but do check back occasionally to see if there’s anything new.
Finally, if you have any interest in trip reports from the tropics, part of vermivora.com will be dedicated to detailed reports of my birding trips to South America, with information on how to travel there cheaply and with public transport.
The North American Checklist Committee of the American Ornithologists’ Union has published the results of its deliberations on the first round of proposed changes from 2009, and it has updated the slate of proposals currently under consideration. Here’s a quick summary of the changes that affect species splits north of Mexico. (I won’t get into all the changes to scientific names, even though those topics are just as interesting in my opinion — you can click through to read about those yourself.)
Proposal accepted
This split will become official once the next checklist supplement is published in the July 2010 issue of the Auk.
Split Pacific Wren from Winter Wren. As I reported earlier, this split did indeed pass, and unanimously at that. However, note that the names “Pacific Wren” and “Winter Wren” are not final. The committee is considering an addendum to the proposal that would split eastern North American birds from Eurasian birds and change the names of the American species to “Western Winter-Wren” and “Eastern Winter-Wren.” Stay tuned.
Proposals rejected
In most cases, a 2/3 vote of the committee is required for a proposal to pass. These proposals failed to muster that level of support:
South Hills Crossbill. The proposal to split South Hills Crossbill (Type 9) from Red Crossbill failed on a vote of 6 “yes” votes to 5 “no” votes, with three of the “no” voters indicating that they would be open to changing their minds if presented with more data. Two of those voters preferred to deal with the North American Red Crossbill complex as a whole, rather than splitting one type at a time, piecemeal. Thus, most of the committee appears to accept that the different call types of Red Crossbill are likely good species, but I think it may be a while before those species appear in your field guide.
The split of Western Scrub-Jay. The proposal to split the interior “Woodhouse’s” Scrub-Jay (woodhousei) from “California” Scrub-Jay (nominate californica) failed on a vote of 7 “yes” votes to 5 “no” votes. Many members of the committee felt that more data were needed from contact zones. The tagalong proposal to split the southern Mexican subspecies sumichrasti into yet a third species gained even less committee support. Vocal differences between woodhousei and californica have been reported, and you can expect those differences to be discussed in a future post on this blog.
New proposals
The checklist committee never sleeps. The following splits of North American species are now under consideration:
Split Black Scoter (Melanitta americana) from Common Scoter (Melanitta nigra). I wrote about this split recently. This proposal was originally submitted in 2006 and failed to pass at that time, but the recent publication of Sangster (2009) has revived it. Personally, I think it’s a clear-cut split, but we’ll see if the committee agrees.
Split Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre) into two species: the western palmeri group and eastern curvirostre group. The proposal makes no recommendation regarding the resulting English names. The proposal cites various genetic data, which I won’t comment on, but it also cites vocal differences, including differences in calls. I’m a little skeptical of these differences, but I’ll investigate them in the future and report back on what I find.
Split Whip-poor-will (Caprimulgus vociferus) into a nominate eastern species and the southwestern arizonae species, on the basis of subtle but easily diagnosable differences in song, differences in egg coloration, and (most importantly) a hot-off-the-presses study demonstrating that the vociferus and arizonae groups may be as genetically distinct from one another as either is from the Dusky Nightjar (C. saturatus) of Costa Rica and Panama. I haven’t been able to track down the article text yet, so I can’t say what I think of it.
As you can see, vocal differences are playing an ever-more-prominent role in taxonomic decisions. Look for more on this topic from me in the future.
It’s March 4th, and that means it’s time to wish you all a happy Merganser Day.
What is Merganser Day, you ask? It’s my own personal birding holiday. It commemorates one of the most important days in my life as a birder: March 4th, 1992.
Red-breasted Merganser, Keyport, NJ, 1/2009. Photo by Harmonica Pete (Creative Commons 2.0).
At the beginning of high school, I was already an obsessive birder, but not yet a good one. I had nearly memorized the field guide and was ready and eager to see all the birds it illustrated, but I had encountered few of them in real life. My backyard seemed to contain only the common birds — robins, Mourning Doves, Downy Woodpeckers, crows — and I was solidly convinced that Sioux Falls, South Dakota was inhabited by only about fifty species of birds and one serious birdwatcher: me.
My first hint to the contrary came at the start of 1991, when I discovered a book called The Birds of South Dakota on the shelves of the public library. It was full of sightings of outlandish exotic birds (Scarlet Tanagers! Rose-breasted Grosbeaks! Black-throated Green Warblers!) from right inside Sioux Falls, with dates and names of observers — lots of observers. I was electrified. It seemed I had a lot of catching up to do.
I started birding every day that spring — and lo and behold, birds appeared in the “empty” woods: Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Eastern Phoebes, Hermit Thrushes, Brown Creepers. In the month of May alone I found 20 lifers on walks from home. But still I was birding all by myself. I was intimidated by the thought of contacting the rest of the birding community, convinced they knew far more than I did and had seen many more birds. So for the next year it was just me and The Birds of South Dakota.
Then, on March 4th, 1992, I saw a bird that changed the game: a Red-breasted Merganser in Lincoln County. According to the book, I had beaten the earliest-ever spring sighting away from the Missouri River by almost three weeks. I decided it was time to tell someone — and that’s how I ended up getting involved with the South Dakota Ornithologists’ Union, the Sioux Falls Bird Club, the Christmas Bird Count, etcetera. In short, that merganser ended up marking my official entry into the birding community.
Hooded Merganser, Norman, OK, 10/1/08. Photo by Jerry Oldenettel (Creative Commons 2.0).
By complete coincidence, it was three years later to the day when I saw my lifer Hooded Merganser on a pond in Cochituate, Massachusetts, forever cementing March 4th as “Merganser Day” in my mind. Hooded Merganser remains my all-time favorite duck.
I have gone birding every March 4th since 1995, usually trying to find a merganser if I can. In 1997 in Irkutsk, Russia it was Goosanders in the Angara River. In 1998 in western Massachusetts it was Common Mergansers on the Hoosic. The last few years in Colorado I’ve found all three species with ease, but in 1999 in South Dakota I had trouble finding open water and had to settle for a Wood Duck at somebody’s farmhouse water fixture.
This morning, for a change of pace, I decided not to chase after ducks. Instead I sought out a pair of White-winged Crossbills in Fort Collins, which satisfied the birding bug quite nicely, thank you.
I know this post has been low on bird sounds so far, so here’s a link to Russ Wigh’s recording of the wonderful growling display of Hooded Merganser to tide you over. There will be more bird sounds coming just as soon as I can figure out how to fix the unfortunate bug on my computer that isn’t letting me listen to or edit my old recordings at the moment. Sigh….
Andrew Spencer recording a Gould's Toucanet, Cristalino Lodge, Brazil, September 2009. Click to hear the recording.Andrew's current recording rig: a 22-inch Telinga parabola with a Sennheiser ME62 microphone and a Fostex FR2-LE digital recorder. Note the duct tape, sweat stains, etc.
I’ve been bugging my old buddy Andrew Spencer to send me a recordist profile for months now, but until this week he was too busy slogging around South America. Now he’s on a stateside break until July, when he’s headed back to the Bird Continent to take up residence as a professional birding tour guide.
Ten years ago Andrew and I used to take off on birding trips all weekend every weekend, not to mention most days after school. After I caught the recording bug, it wasn’t too long before Andrew caught it too. Now, he’s the top contributor to Xeno-Canto, with 2500+ of his recordings online.
I’m pleased to say that I’ve added Andrew as an Earbirding author, so you’ll be seeing occasional posts by him on this site from now on. I figured it was a good idea to introduce him to his audience before handing him a keyboard — hence this author profile.
Here’s what Andrew has to say about himself and his recording.
I started watching birds when I was about five, but didn’t start recording until after my first trip to South America, to Ecuador in 2006. While there I realized that the ability to record birds in the tropic was absolutely fundamental to fully enjoying South American birding, and as soon as I got back I bought my first recording rig.
In the few years since then I have become ever more deeply obsessed with recording…what at first was something to help call unknown birds in and document unknown sounds for later identification became a quest to record as many species, song, and call types as I could. As a result I have traveled around much of the US and South America recording birds.
Since I started recording I have used a number of different recording rigs, in the following chronological order:
Sony HD mini-disc with a Sennheiser me66 shotgun mic
This was my first rig, and a basic yet ultra portable setup. The minidisk recorder did a decent job in terms of recording the sound, but had several serious drawbacks, chiefly the lack of ability to manually adjust the gain. [listen to a Yellow Rail Andrew recorded with this rig]
Oade modified Marantz PMD660
I used this recorder with both my shotgun mic and with a Telinga Parabola I later purchased. Of all the recorders I’ve used this was by far my favorite; it had remarkably clean and powerful preamps, approaching those of high-end recorders. It did have some durability problems, and repeated exposure to high humidity in the tropics caused problems with the output lines. [listen to a Tepui Wren recorded with Marantz & shotgun, and a Golden-cheeked Warbler recorded with Marantz & parabola ]
Fostex FR2-LE
My current recorder, I got this on short notice to replace the malfunctioning Marantz. As a whole it does a decent job, but the preamps are noticeably noisier and less powerful that the Marantz, and the rig as a whole is less durable in my opinion. I mostly use a Telinga Parabola and a Sennheiser me62 omnidirectional microphone with the Fostex, which produces acceptable but usually not stellar results. [listen to a Peruvian Plantcutter recorded with Fostex & parabola]
I use a couple of different recording styles while in the field, depending on where I am and who I am with. In North America I usually have a small list of targets that I want to record, and if I find a vocalizing bird I stick with it for a long time trying to get different sounds out of it. Other times, especially if I am on a trip to an area I don’t go to much or with non-recordists I will record a bird making noise but move on fairly quickly to the next species.
I tend not to use headphones while recording, even with the parabola. While using headphones does allow one to pinpoint a singing species with more precision I find that it also makes it harder to hear other birds singing around you, and the process of putting on an removing the headphones both eats up time and is really quite annoying. With practice I feel it is possible to pinpoint a target with a fair degree of accuracy and by watching the meters on the recorder. Since I don’t use headphones I also rarely use the wind coat for that parabola, since this allows me to look through the clear dish and at the bird, if it is visible, and pinpoint it without having headphones.
Unlike some recordists I am a big believer in post recording editing. Typically I will filter out low frequency rumble if it doesn’t overlap the target signal, amplify the recording if it is very quiet, and if necessary remove background talking and handling noise. For editing sounds I recommend Raven Lite, available free from the Macaulay Library, and for more advanced editing Adobe Audition.
Well, I’ve missed my deadline to return to blogging by quite a bit, and it looks like the hiatus will need to continue, for the following reasons:
Another colleague of mine got sick, so I’m taking on two extra classes again for at least the remainder of February;
I’m trying to put together a book proposal that I want to submit by the end of the month;
I got engaged on Valentine’s Day, so I’m trying to plan a wedding.
That last excuse is one you can only really get away with once in your life, and my students have encouraged me to milk it for all it’s worth. Therefore, I’m going to send you all my blogging regrets at least until the end of February. When I return to the blog in early March, you can expect some exciting posts about the calls of Boreal Owls and the songs of hybrid birds. Until then, I recommend trolling the links on the right to get your fix of bird sound blogging.
Between the need to completely rearrange the furniture in my house and a sudden doubling of my class load at work (since I’m covering for a sick colleague this week), not to mention a slight bug that’s got me under the weather, I’m going to have to bow out of the blogging business for the first week of February. I’ll be back no later than Super Bowl Sunday! See you then!
I know, I know — you’re still reeling from the news that Pacific Wren is being split from Winter Wren. The last thing you’re willing to deal with right now is another taxonomic split based on vocal differences, right?
Somehow, I think you can handle it.
Black Scoter (American form), White Rock, British Columbia, 12/4/2008. Photo by Rick Leche (Creative Commons 2.0).
In much of the world, this “new” split isn’t even new. Many authorities, including the British Ornithologists’ Union, have classified Black Scoter and Common Scoter as separate species for some time now, in part on the basis of the striking differences in bill color between males of the two groups: the American and eastern Siberian birds (“Black Scoters”) have an enormous bright orange knob atop the bill, while European males (“Common Scoters”) sport far duller and less decorative schnozzes, making them less conspicuous in flocks of sea ducks — you might consider them the “Stealth” version of the bird.
So far, taking a conservative stance, the American Ornithologists’ Union has continued to recognize only a single species, “Black Scoter,” Melanitta nigra.
Common Scoter (European form), Brouwersdam, Netherlands, 11/15/2007. Photo by Pieter van Veelen. Used with permission.
Now comes the best evidence I’ve seen yet that the two should be split. In a recent issue of the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, George Sangster has published an analysis of the differences in male courtship calls between Black and Common Scoters. His analysis boils down to this: Black Scoters sound basically alike across their entire range, and the same goes for Common Scoters; but the two forms can always be told apart by the length of their vocalizations (Black’s notes are much longer) and usually by pitch as well (Black’s notes are slightly higher-pitched).
You can hear the differences several places on the web. Here are some Black Scoter sounds from Manitoba, New Jersey (Cape May and Barnegat Light) and from Chukotka in Russia. Note the plaintive, eerie quality to the calls.
The Common Scoter’s mating call can be heard on this page (which is in Dutch)…not many recordings of this taxon are online, and all the ones I’ve found are truncations of the file I just linked. The notes of the Common male are less than a quarter as long as those of the male Black, and the overall effect is completely different — nothing at all like those long, haunting whistles from America. (Note, however, that Black Scoters occasionally make some short notes too…listen to the background of the Barnegat Light recording at 2:35.)
Sangster ends his article with the intriguing possibility that White-winged/Velvet Scoters might also show vocal differences in up to three species groups. But if you think Black/Common Scoters are hard to find on the web, try looking for the other species! I’ll give a gold star to anyone who points me towards any (legal) online White-winged Scoter cuts besides this one!
Here’s another beautiful Common Scoter pic:
Common Scoter. Photo by Björn Gudmundsson, used with permission. Clink for link.
The grapevine tells me that the AOU checklist committee has voted to split Pacific Wren from Winter Wren. This is fourth-hand information, but it originates with a member of the checklist committee and I believe it’s reliable.
This means the split is a done deal, but it’s not official until the committee publishes its 51st supplement to the checklist, which will happen in July 2010. Between now and then, it would behoove birders, especially those in the Mountain West, to pay very careful attention to any Winter/Pacific wrens they may encounter. Here in Colorado, we still have a lot of work to do to try to figure out the occurrence patterns of the two species, and I bet the same is true in many other states as well. Although there are certainly visual differences, sounds remain a key distinction between these species; see my earlier posts on differentiating them by call and by song.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for more information on why these two species are being split, check out Nick Sly’s post on the subject from 2008. It’s marvelous.
