hello Mitch,
of course the whole idea of xeno-canto was exactly to provide ways of searc=
hing through massive amounts of sounds and identifying them to species.
Depending on what clues you have (location, family, genus, altitude, habita=
t etc etc) you can narrow down your search. I assume you've tried that?
You can als add descriptors of the sound you hear. Give the identify page =
a spin. Especially on the Americas site this can be helpful.
A quite cool feature is to start looking from other sounds you heard in the=
neighbourhood that you do know. E.g. if you ID'd white-crowned Sparrow at =
the same location there is a possibility to search XC for all species that =
have been recorded together with white-crowned sparrow. It relies on people=
identifying background species on their recordings. This was the way that =
I used to find unknown sounds on the legendary DVD's by Sjoerd Mayer.
If you really have no clue now is the good time to post your file as a myst=
ery on XC as hermann Redies is testing an automated sound recognition syste=
m that compares characteristic syllables from your recording to all other r=
ecordings in the database.
The system is called Pai-Luiz and we hope it will go public some time soon.
cheers
Willem-Pier
--- In Mitch Hill <> wrote:
>
> Vicki,
>
> Thank you for your reply and to all other's who replied as well...
>
> I'm reasonably satisfied the mystery sound is the Northern Flicker... mo=
re
> about this at the bottom of the post.
>
>
> At 07:28 PM 6/12/2010 +1000, you wrote:
>
> >There must be bird song CDs for the area where you live? For
> >instance in Australia we have a 10 CD set 'A field guide to
> >Australian birdsong'. All the same, it would take a long time to go
> >through all the CDs to check up a mystery song.
> >
> >The alternative is to do what you are already doing, post the sound
> >on the internet and ask for suggestions :-)
>
> You are correct, yes, there are CD's of bird songs available for this are=
a,
> and I'm investigating purchasing a set.
>
> Trying to identify that sound by listening to bird sounds on the internet=
> using the most common data bases of bird sounds is near impossible if you=
> have no idea what the bird is or looks like. One needs some sort of a
> species clue to put into a search engine and that gets the door open and=
> makes an internet database search possible. But without a clue, it become=
s
> frustrating difficult. One of my favorite sounds databases to search is t=
he
> Macauly Library at Cornell University however the number of files for eac=
h
> species is overwhelming and here you definitely need to know what you are=
> looking for.
>
> I also belong to the BNA.bird/cornell.edu users group and have full acces=
s
> to that fabulous resource but again, one needs to know what species one i=
s
> looking for in order to use it.
>
> I also use the Xeno-Canto data base and again find the same issues as wit=
h
> the others, you need some clue to start with...
>
> I was hoping someone on here would have knowledge of some resource or nea=
t
> trick in using what is available to help sort this sound out...
>
> As to identifying this sound as the Northern Flicker and not the Piliated=
> Woodpecker, it has a lot to do with the location. This sound was recorde=
d
> about 4 miles west of Hyannis on Cape Cod in a heavily developed
> area. Flickers are very often seen in this area, I have seen two this
> spring so far and this morning, Saturday, June, 12th, I'm hearing the
> mystery sound all around me. According to the National Geographic
> "Complete Birds of North America" book, this call that I am hearing and
> have recorded is the mating call of the Northern Flicker.
>
> And, my brother, much more knowledgeable than me in bird identification,=
> heard my recording and says without a doubt, it is the Flicker...
>
> With you all available as a resource and a wonderful wealth of knowledge=
> amongst you, I will post the puzzlers here and I thank you all for helpin=
g...
>
>
> --
>
> Thanks,
> Mitch & Shadow...
>
>
>
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