hello all,
I thought I'd give an update on www.xeno-canto.org. You may remember it
is a community site where recordists share sounds of birds from the
Americas on the web. About 175 of them have brought together 17000+
recordings of 3100+ species now. And in some good old-fashioned web
spirit many helped out thinking of new concepts, testing, translating,
solving mysteries etc. In terms of bird species represented it may be
the 3rd or 4th largest collection anywhere, and slowly the sounds are
being referred to in trip reports and scientific papers and so on. Many
of the recordists are from the Neotropics which we think is really nice.
Anyway, recently the African Bird Club asked us to set-up an African
counterpart together with them. They run a very nice website with all
kinds of info on African birds and they figured that a cooperation would
be beneficial for all. Just before they got in touch we secured
long-term support by the natural history museum here in the Netherlands
(Naturalis), so we felt comfortable getting started on a new adventure:
www.xeno-canto.org/africa . Check it out.
Internet coverage is not up to Neotropical standards in Africa so it
may be a bit more difficult to get things really started, but we'll get
there. If any of you have recordings of birds from Africa lying around
you'd be willing to share, go ahead! If things are not clear or if it
takes too much time, drop us a line, and we'll help out.
Willem-Pier and Bob
Willem-Pier Vellinga
www.xeno-canto.org
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