I can understand that there are probably more than a few group members
here that are tired of the discussion on bird sound playback. The main
reason that I chose to address this subject in depth is because it is a
constant, recurring theme here over the past 4 years, one that threatens
to return because of it has never been treated with any type of
comprehensive text. Yet, if one goes back through the posts, one can see
that there has never been a detailed discussion on the subject - only a
host of posts defining opinions that show very little substance in
evidence. Why is this important? If I were a sound engineer interested
in studio work, I would wonder why all the hoopla. Well, the huge
percentage of sounds elicited for bird collections today involve
playback. It has very common use because equipment is now more
affordable and portable and birding has exploded in the past 35 years.
In a nutshell, it has become an important component in how we capture
bird sound, regardless of how one feels about it. John Hertog's
questions underscore the need for more explanation. John represents a
part of our list that probably has a limited understanding of the nature
of birders. This is to be expected. Unless one participates in the
hobby, spending a weekend observing a hobby that attracts obsessive
compulsives like a Stephen King film casting, it is hard to come to
grips with the fervour that birders exhibit in trying to see all of the
birds that they can, but I will reserve my thoughts on this for another
post.
Why could John Moore et al not wait for Jocotoco Antpitta to make its
appearance on its own terms? He was working with Robert Ridgely,
pre-eminent author of most of what we use for field guides from Panama
south. The bird's voice initially would have tipped everyone off. An
experienced birder in the tropics spends more time listening for the
unfamiliar, especially if he/she has a good working knowledge of the
expected calls in a particular habitat. An important point that John
made here is that literally hundreds of birders have visited this area
of Podocarpus in Ecuador. Yet, this bird was undetected. Why? It is an
antpitta! No amount of sit and wait would have worked for this discovery
unless someone had the patience of Job to sit in its habitat for months
at a time. An experienced field man knows that he has a very short time
in which to call in a bird. They are often moving and, if one waits, the
bird will get to a sort of unwritten threshold where it won't respond
and the chance is lost to find out what it was. The tropics aren't North
America. One does not have unlimited time and unlimited opportunities to
return to the same habitat. Jocotoco has become the poster bird of
Ecuadorean conservation, and, with rapidly vanishing habitat, was not
discovered a moment too soon. Its discovery helps reinforce
conservationist's pleas that we need to do a lot more research before
would eliminate forests in favour of human needs.
Scott Connop
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