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preaching to the choir on ambience

Subject: preaching to the choir on ambience
From: "Rich Peet" <>
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 22:06:01 -0000
I have returned from my semi-annual trip to the Sand Bluff Bird 
Observatory.

This bird banding station is one of the largest small-bird banding 
facilities in the country.  But that is not what makes it worth my 
visiting twice per year.  This station overseen by Lee Johnson now 
has a 36 year data set of banding at a single location by a single 
methodology and overseen by a single individual.  It is located in 
the US Midwest on the northern edge of the "great corn desert".  The 
data set is not pretty as it shows year after year of declines of 
song birds in the US.

For me and I hope others, this gives charge to record ambience now.  
To resist just making technical "sound creation" of what something 
should sound like.  I still expect to be able to find almost all our 
local species in 20 years when simply looking for an individual.  But 
by my memories the chorus is already dying in most places and finding 
remnants takes considerable work for good ambience recordings now.  
Next spring I hope to again spend the majority of my time during 
spring to preserve and demonstrate what we have had and help others 
to restore this in the future.  

It has become impossible to be optimistic in the short haul so my 
hope lies with future people to look back and listen for what we once 
had and find the tools to bring it back.

Rich Peet
with a political rant




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