In regards to the comments made about alternatives to using playback for
scientific purposes, we would need to make a lot of space available here
for everyone's experience to underline the process. I think we have been
able to make a strong delineation for the use of playback for purely
visual reasons as opposed to its use for ID and behavioral studies.
Also, we have discussed the difference between its use in North America,
or Europe for that matter, as opposed to the tropics. However, I do not
believe that we have made it clear how big this difference is. The use
of vocalizations in the tropics by birds implies many of the same
characteristics as a bird would exhibit anywhere, but it does go far
beyond. Since many of the birds are non-migratory or are only locally
mobile (e.g. an altitudinal mugrant), voice has many more uses and is
exhibited throughout the year, even non-breeding. Feeding flock behavior
rules, and it is important to note that many of our migrants enjoin this
behavior once they arrive on their wintering grounds. Anyone familiar
with feeding flock behavior will tell you how the sounds differ while
the birds do their thing, and the sounds they make at dawn are often
different than the ones they make at noon and dusk. On top of this, you
are talking about many more species that are often total writeoffs to
eliminate based on purely visual features and the types of looks you
normally get in a tropical forest. If this isn't bad enough, you have
families such as tapaculos and antpittas which will basically avoid
visual detection completely, even when one spends copious amounts of
time in the field. And these are only ground birds. Feeding flocks occur
at all levels in a tropical forest. Canopy flocks require an enormous
amount time to work, and it has only been through the creation of canopy
walkways and towers in birder-oriented locations that we have gained a
better understanding. Trying to properly identify and understand a
canopy flock of 20 species plus moving at 120 feet through a dense
canopy overhead is almost impossible. I say almost because there are a
few ornithologists that can do a pretty good job, but even they would
admit to the difficulty and the time one would need. John Terborgh and
Charlie Munn wrote an excellent piece on flock behavior from Manu, and,
if one does not get anything else from the article, one could not fail
to see how much time they spent in trying to understand the species
creating this dynamic. Oh, and they used playback, or they would still
be there trying to ID everything. Ted Parker was considered one of the
best at using vocal work for inventory. His tragic death while doing
Rapid assessments underscores the problem. He was paid to go into a
tropical area and bring out as much data as quickly as he could. The
reason for speed was multi-faceted. Vanishing habitat coupled with vast
areas linked to limited funds, and the scientific community has only a
few individuals with even a remotely sensible amount of knowledge to
perform this. I had the pleasure of knowing Ted for a while and we
discussed playback, amongst many other aspects of tropical birding. His
huge contribution to our database came from a necessary and liberal use
of playback throughout his entire career. And I still correct some of
his ID's in the MacAuley Lab (albeit most mistakes he made were earlier
in his career). He would have been one of the first persons to say, in
this forum or any, how important playback was to the proper ID of
tropical birds. He would not have been who he was and would not have
been able to influence so many without its use in the compilation of his
work. It is almost a disservice to mention a few species where our use
of sound was the only reason for their discovery. There are many in the
tropics. The only analogy I can really draw for North American birders
is in the Empidonax complex. Multiply this situation a hundred fold and
you begin to get an idea about what faces a tropical birder. I have
birded the tropics since 1979, with and without a tape recorder, and
there is no comparison. Many of the birds do not come to you and you
cannot go to them, mainly as a result of their habits and habitat
preference. And they will not regardless of how much time you spend.
Andean species will move in feeding flocks through areas that we barely
touch in terms of access, often on slopes that defy human abilities on
any reasonable level.
What I am trying to do here is give anyone who is not a birder, or only
a local one, a feel of what sound is being used for in certain parts of
the world. I can address its use in temperate areas in another post as I
believe this brings into play many other aspects, including tour leader
use and the use of sound by listers and birders with very amateurish
goals. This subject has a very broad scope in the birding community and
many comments made here were in reference to only very limited aspects
of the use of playback for birds. I know that all of us have limited
time to make postings, and even more limited time to read them, but if
we want to dig into something as pervasive, controversial, and, yes,
useful, as this topic is, we need to make the attempt to try and be as
clear and comprehensive as is needed if we plan on influencing anyone in
our forum. A lot of people here have extensive experience in nature
recording but the real beauty of this list is that we have folks who use
sound for many different things. This post refers to what I do and have
been doing for 30 years. The technical posts on acoustics here are often
far too scientific for my purposes, but I pay attention because, amidst
everything, I pick up stuff that improves both my recording and
archiving. I am glad others are doing it, because field work sucks up my
time and interest, and, oh yeah, kids do, too.
Scott Connop
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