In response to Kevin's query re historical recordings, I have recorded a
number of species that are closely tied to rushing water around the
world and there are great similarities in the way they have evolved to
project their voices. In places such as New Guinea, the Himalayas, or,
for that matter, any mountainous area with rushing water, there are
species that exhibit similar vocal characteristics in response to their
noisy habitat. Some examples that come to mind are Plumbeous Redstart,
Spotted Wren-Babbler and the forktails in the Himalayas, Torrent-Lark
and Blue-gray Robin in New Guinea, African Pied Wagtail in Africa. The
most common feature appears to be the piercing, higher-pitched nature of
many of their calls which have the ability to be very audible (at least
to human ears) in the presence of noisy water. Some of them have nasal
call notes which are also very audible above the water noise, e.g.
forktails. I am in the process of converting my entire collection to wav
files and I look forward to analyzing this spectographically in more detail=
.
Scott Connop
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