"Reginald E. David" wrote:
>
> Aloha Chatters:
>
> This may be a very obvious question, I apologize in advance if it has bee=
n
> asked many times before. I am just getting to the point that I am recordi=
ng
> cuts that are of rare / endangered or very localized birds. What
> information should I be recording regarding the conditions under which th=
e
> recordings were made to make these recordings of more value to others?
It's one of the first things to think about. Without some data a
recording is not worth near as much. You need a standard way to write it
down in the field and a database to keep track of it as a minimum.
Most critical is location and time. Use a GPS to get exact location, but
also describe the location. Give road names if you know them, distances
to intersections or towns etc.
Put down numbers, or at least estimate them. You can do this by
groupings, the sequence I use with frogs is:
1, 2-5, 6-10, 11-25, 26-50, 51-100, >100 Do this for all species
present, or at least as much as you can. I just do frogs. Definitely for
everything calling. The same sequence is probably a ok one for birds,
though you will probably use the larger numbers less often than with frogs.
Describe the habitat in reasonable detail. Describe anything interesting
about behavior, etc. Note anything unusual about the condition of the
animals, any unusual coloring etc. Note nests.
It's good to record weather conditions, at least temperature.
Your record should have your name and contact info.
It is also valuable, probably more to you than others to put down the
equipment and settings used. Anything special about the setup and so on.
Science will care little about this, your record is primarily a voucher
that the species occurred at this point at this time. Other than fairly
routine sonograms they will probably do little analysis of your
recording. You should record the calls so that typical calls are clear,
and also any unusual calls. If you intend to do recording for scientific
analysis of the structure of the sound you will need to get the exact
specifics from the person doing the analysis. It gets much more picky.
I have a field card I use for this that's designed for frogcall
recording. I made up my own design, which was originally based on the
one for the Georgia Herp Atlas and is being revised. It's the same size
as that one, 4"x7", which is a odd size, but works well. This has form
sections Called:
Track, Mic, Date, Time, County, State, Directions, GPS, and 8 lines for
Common Name, Species & #'s. It's got my name printed in the front and my
full contact info is on the back of the card, which is also used for any
Site Description/Notes etc.
I also carry a field card for herp photos. It's got spaces on the front:
ID#, Date, County/State, Directions, GPS, Species (I put both common
name and species here), Abundance, & Site Description/Notes.
Back at the computer these correspond to databases. I recently
modernized my sound one, many sections are set up so they pop up lists
to select to avoid typos. Categories in the Filemaker Database:
Date, Time, Audio ID #, Length, County, State, Temperature, Microphone,
GPS, Directions, Notes, and 8 lines - Common Name, Species, Abundance,
and a cross index if photographed.
I'm in the process of finishing the last of my data entry to get fully
caught up, and then I need to go back through and add in the notes
section something on the sound quality. I neglected putting that in and
it's a important piece of info. Particularly for field survey where so
much may be poor quality.
The photo one corresponds to the card, I've yet to update it since
finishing the Herp Atlas work. Right now it's all herps.
Note the final index numbers I use are not immediately assigned, I
pencil in the track numbers and disk number from the recorder, but the
final track number is assigned based on the track number in the master
CD set for it. I keep the original minidiscs, and leave the pencil
marks. This double numbering system keeps the index numbers a bit more
sane as I can have tracks on the minidisc that are simply tossed, or
multiple tracks from one site.
I don't bother putting metadata into the audio files, though others do
it that way. In the long term file formats can change or software to
read the data will not be available. Since some of my master copies are
audio CD's and some aiff files, I also could not put metadata on all.
Walt
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