naturerecordists
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Re: Cassowary calls may be lowest bird calls

Subject: Re: Re: Cassowary calls may be lowest bird calls
From: "M, J, & V Phinney" <>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:16:39 -0700
Anyone happen to know the frequency of (interior) blue grouse hooting? I
recall video taping them with a cheapo camera & stock mic. The bird was
strutting around on the ground, hooting occasionally. I remember thinking
how low the sound was. When I watched the tape later, it was a silent film!
The mic didn't even pick it up!

I've read that male spruce grouse call even lower than blues. I personally
haven't heard one. Maybe they can't be heard by humans?


Mark Phinney


on 10/30/03 8:37 PM, Rich Peet at  wrote:

Adobe listserv agrees with Bernie as well and posted:
This is fascinating, Rich!

The clipping begins with the fifth "thump." You can see how the first
four are nicely rounded, and the subsequent ones become squared off
on one or both axes. The squared portion is not level because
electronics aren't very good at reproducing DC, even for a brief
moment! The clipping may have been in the mic pre; you might have
recorded this thinking that the level was fine while the low frequecy
of the thump saturated the electronics prior to the A/D converter.

So what is the frequency content of the thump? If you analyze the
length of one full cycle of the thump, or even copy it and loop paste
it numerous times to enable frequency analysis, you'll get answers in
the 40-50Hz range, which is still a pretty impressive noise for a
bird to actuate. If you do a frequency analysis of the whole file,
you'll find the most energy concentrated between 35-70 Hz.

I wouldn't call it infrasonic (unless you were positioned inside the
tree trunk!), but still quite amazing.



And I add:
To correct the possible proximity effect and possible clipping I post
for those that care the same bird recorded at about 50' with a Pine
Warbler stuck in the middle. A larger 1 meg download that sounds
about the same when heard by a speaker.

http://home.comcast.net/~richpeet/0298b.wav

Rich Peet




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the naturerecordists mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU