{"id":619,"date":"2009-08-17T12:32:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T18:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=619"},"modified":"2009-08-18T08:04:29","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T14:04:29","slug":"the-fall-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/619","title":{"rendered":"The Fall Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 If you browse the Macaulay Library <\/a>catalog, or the Borror Lab<\/a>‘s recordings, or Xeno-Canto<\/a>‘s North American collection, you’ll see exactly what I mean.\u00a0 The vast majority of recordings are made from April to June, with a fair number from March and July as well.\u00a0 Late winter (January-February) is an underrepresented period, but it pales in comparison to the period from August to December, when it seems like almost nobody goes out with a microphone.<\/p>\n

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)\u00a0 some of the most interesting and worthwhile bird sounds of the entire year!\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Begging calls, begging calls, begging calls.<\/strong> I said it thrice because I believe it’s one of the most shamefully neglected classes of bird vocalization, and the Fledgling Project<\/a> agrees with me.\u00a0 You won’t have to browse many Birds of North America<\/a> “Sounds” accounts before finding the phrase, “development not described.”\u00a0 That’s because not enough microphones have been pointed at squalling baby birds, whether in or out of the nest.\u00a0 This is one of the easiest ways for an amateur recordist to make a big contribution to our knowledge of birds.<\/li>\n
  2. Juvenile subsong.<\/strong> In many species of bird, youngsters have already started to practice their songs, in a developmental process akin to the “babbling” of human babies.\u00a0 The results can be fascinating, beautiful, and scientifically significant.<\/li>\n
  3. Shorebird calls.<\/strong> Millions of shorebirds are headed south right now throughout North America, and some of them will still be southbound as late as October.\u00a0 Shorebirds are traditionally pretty poorly represented in audio collections, but there is a lot to learn about their calls also.<\/li>\n
  4. Fall song.<\/strong> Some birds can occasionally sing as much on fall migration as they do on spring migration, or even more, with vireos being a great example.\u00a0 Phoebes and other flycatchers can occasionally give variable renditions in fall of their typically stereotyped spring songs.\u00a0 How and why does fall singing differ from\u00a0 spring singing?\u00a0 More recordings would help answer the question.<\/li>\n
  5. Nocturnal flight calls of fall migrants.<\/strong> Many people have jumped on this bandwagon in the East in recent years, and some are starting to do so in the West — in fact, in just two weeks I’ll be co-leading a workshop <\/a>on nocturnal migration here in Colorado that filled up some time ago.\u00a0 I know people in several states who have just begun putting microphones out to capture the sounds of the overnight flight, and there are a lot of online resources to help people get involved.\u00a0 Start with Oldbird.org<\/a>, the website of Bill Evans*, one of the original flight call gurus, where you can listen to flight calls online and learn how to build your own cheap nocturnal sky microphone. You can hear more flight calls from the East on the websites of Steve Kelling<\/a>., A.P. Martin<\/a>, and Matt Orsie<\/a>,\u00a0 and get updates on western nocturnal migration by following Ted Floyd on Twitter<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  6. Winter specialties.<\/strong> Crossbills, juncos, American Tree Sparrows, Evening Grosbeaks, redpolls, longspurs, Snow Buntings, swans, geese, gulls, ducks.\u00a0 And crossbills.\u00a0 Need I say more?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you already record sounds, don’t leave your microphone at home in the bottom half of the year!\u00a0 Recordings from fall and winter are rarer, and therefore more valuable.\u00a0 And if you don’t yet record, but have the wherewithal to start, now’s a great time!<\/p>\n

    *revision 8\/18\/2009: thanks to Ted Floyd for pointing out to me that Oldbird.org is Bill Evans’s website, not Michael O’Brien’s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-begging-calls","category-flight-calls","category-recording"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}