Hi Peter,
Raven Lite will not only take a number of digitally recorded formats
from you recorder via a computer, but also read calls from any
commercial CD and hence you can supplement the disk provided with the
book, with Oz recordings eg the BOCA set or the sets by Fred van Gessel
etc. The book's CD has its main use with the examples used in the book,
allowing you to listen to and (using Raven Lite) simultaneously observe
the sonograms while you read the comments. The book and CD by the way is
not meant to be a sonogram based catalogue of US bird calls but rather
it is a collection of those calls which are described in the book and
form parts of the authors research over the years.
IMHO the main use of the book is to give you ideas about some of the
uses of bird call sonograms.
If you access to them the HANZAAB books have (very small) sonogram
examples with many species - but be aware - some birds only have one of
two different calls (eg Eastern Whipbird) but others have literally
thousands of variations (see the book) ... and some calls can also
change with time and with interactions with other birds.
A question I'm trying to answer is, can you easily distinguish between
an original bird call and an imitation of that call eg by a lyrebird ie
does the call just sound the same to us (and have a different sonogram)
or are the sonograms virtually the same as well? This has a practical
application with bird surveys using recorded sounds. At present a group
associated with the Hunter Bird Observers Club (HBOC) is monitoring some
rufous scrub birds using specialised waterproof recorders which can
record for days or even weeks unattended in the rainforest. RSB's are
easy to detect when they use their own characteristic chipping calls etc
but they also mimic other bird calls and sounds at times - is the
recording an RSB mimic or the real bird?
Ian
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Ian Martin Newcastle, NSW, Australia
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