Earbirding – Page 17 – Recording, identifying, and interpreting bird sounds

The Fall Challenge

17 August 2009 Nathan Pieplow

I’ve noticed that an awful lot of nature sound recordists in North America have traditionally focused on recording in the spring and early summer. Between August and December, it seems like almost nobody goes out with a microphone. We’re heading into that traditional “dead period” now, and I just want to point out that no matter where you live, there are some terrific opportunities for recording (and listening to) some of the most interesting and worthwhile sounds of the entire year.

Another Chipmunk Mystery

12 August 2009 Nathan Pieplow

This past week I was in Michigan, where I had an opportunity to get out and do some recording on a couple of mornings. My earlier posts on chipmunk “chuck” calls had stimulated my curiosity in mammal sounds, so when the chipmunks started calling all around me, I turned on the mic — and lo and behold, I got something pretty interesting.

Gray Hawk, continued

3 August 2009 Nathan Pieplow

In my last post, I discussed differences in the alarm calls of Gray Hawk (for the purposes of this post, Buteo plagiatus) and Gray-lined Hawk (here, Buteo nitidus). See that post for a discussion of taxonomic issues. In this post, I plan to add some information about alarm calls and also discuss the series calls of these two taxa.

Splitting the Gray Hawk

25 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

The Gray Hawk was historically considered two species. In recent years the AOU has recognized only a single species, but evidence is mounting that it should in fact recognize two. In this post I present added evidence for the split: substantial differences in voice between the “Gray” (plagiatus) and “Gray-lined” (nitidus) groups, a fact that seems to have gone unreported in the literature so far.

How to Read Spectrograms: Trills and Beats

19 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

I’ve published Lesson Four on trills and beats. Lessons five and six may be a while in coming, since they are slated to deal with nasality and polyphony, which is where things start to get complicated.

Pygmy-Owl vs. Chipmunk

16 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

In addition to the comments on my recent pygmy-owl post, I got five private emails, all of which implicated Merriam’s Chipmunk as the likely source of the pygmy-owl-like sound. In this post I examine the evidence for chipmunk origin of the sound.

Macaulay’s Red Crossbill Types

14 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

By popular demand, here’s a natural extension of my first post: an index to the Red Crossbill call types on some of the cuts in the Macaulay Library collection.

Pygmy-Owl Confusion

11 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

On 12 January 2009, my friend Andrew Spencer recorded an unseen creature on Chews Ridge in Monterey County, California. To my ear it sounds like a Northern Pygmy-Owl, but a few things about this and Doug Von Gausig’s recording are strange. Are they representatives of an anomalous local dialect? Or of a different type of vocalization than the primary song? Are they not even pygmy-owls at all?

A Brown-headed Stepchild

9 July 2009 Nathan Pieplow

Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites, which means they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and leave the job of child-rearing to unwitting foster parents. Hearing two begging cowbirds in two days got me thinking. What if the begging of the cowbird sounds nothing like the begging of its foster parents’ biological chicks? Is it less likely to be fed?

How to Read Spectrograms: Noise

29 June 2009 Nathan Pieplow

Lesson three is up; it covers noise. Also, I neglected to mention it before, but I’ve been working on updating the Bird Sound Glossary as well. As I expand the spectrogram pages, I’ll add more “example” links to the glossary, and I’ll expand the number of terms as we go. As always, comments appreciated!