Greater vs. Lesser Yellowlegs
Can you tell Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs apart by voice? Can anybody?
The “Tink” Call
Many species of warbler and sparrow give high, sharp “tink” notes that seem worth of their own category, separate from the “call” and the “flight call.”
Learning Laplands
In trying to catalog Lapland Longspur calls, I ended up making a map of variation.
The Visual Power of GIFs
Ornithologists use the term variety to describe the pattern of delivery of a bird song over time. In the field, it can take many minutes of listening to determine a bird’s pattern. Animated GIFs of spectrograms can condense all this listening into just a few seconds of looping video:
What’s Weird About Rusty Blackbirds
Several authors have described Rusty Blackbirds as having two types of songs. However, I came to the conclusion that I was hearing three different types of songs from the species, not two. Or is that two types of song and a very song-like call?
Splitting the Golden-fronted Woodpecker
At least one call in the Golden-fronted Woodpecker’s repertoire varies geographically, corresponding to the geographic boundaries between two major subspecies groups that probably deserve species rank.
North by Northwest
There are few species in North America as ambiguous as Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus). Even in a group of birds that are exceedingly similar the differences between American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and Northwestern Crow are minuscule at best. The only “surefire” way to tell them apart is by range; however a number of sources also cite vocal differences as a distinguishing characteristic.
Announcing the Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds
I am thrilled to announce that I have signed a book contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to produce The Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds, the first comprehensive guide to the sounds of North American birds.
A Trip to the Audiologist
Birders tend to notice hearing loss before other people. I’ve been concerned about my own ears recently.
The Dawn Song of Brown Creeper
If you had asked me six months ago whether Brown Creeper had a distinctive dawn song, I would have told you no. But as a matter of fact, it does.