On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 01:53:48PM +1000, Arwen B. Ximenes wrote:
> Is there anyone out there with bioacoustics knowledge who can
> shed some light on how to read a waveform? I know there's a
> program called Syrinx but I'd find it easier using one I know,
> although it's admittedly designed for human speech, so wouldn't
> pick up all the frequencies. The answer is probably very obvious
> but never having analysed this type of sound before I'm curious to
> understand more.
A paper by Donald Kroodsma on Winter Wren song is free online here:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v082n04/p0357-p0365.pdf
It should give you a feeling of how their sonagrams get analyzed.
I had a quick look at one Superb Fairy-wren song and one Southern
Emu-wren song. Definitely simpler songs than Winter Wrens but still
the Superb Fairy-wren had roughly 30 syllables over about 4 seconds.
The emu-wren song looked more interesting with overlapping whistles at
separate frequencies presumably one from each syrinx.
A couple of book recommendations.
Praat is very powerful but not the easiest way to look at
bird song. Worth trying is Raven Lite - the free cut-down
version of Cornell's Raven software. It runs on most platforms.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/raven/RavenOverview.html
Donald Kroodsma's popular book the "Singing Life of Birds: The Art and
Science of Listening to Birdsong" is a gentle discursive intro to
bird song and Kroodsma's lifetime of research - including Winter Wrens.
You can get it for under $30 from the US (try bookfinder.com).
More of a reference is Mark Constadine's a "Sound Approach to Birding:
A Guide to Understanding Bird Sound" - a careful and detailed look at
bird songs & sonagrams from a (European) birder's perspective.
Andrew
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