In a thread about birding apps the other day Peter Shute provided some
links to information on understanding spectrograms of bird calls that I'll
quote here:
> There's a good tutorial on reading spectrograms at
http://earbirding.com/blog/specs. The Canyon Wren
> spectrograms at http://earbirding.com/blog/specs/pitch-and-inflection can
be compared to those in the
> lite version of the app to get an idea of how much more useful they are
when done well.
(For reference, The app in question above is iBird Pro 6.1 for North
America.)
I finally had a chance to start looking at the earbirding site that Peter
links to and just wanted to say it's fascinating. I've already confirmed
that I don't have a great natural ear, but that's not a shock. It looks
like it will take some time to understand spectrograms but even after a few
minutes with the examples, it's easy to see how much this approach has to
offer. Verbal transcriptions of calls have never helped me (ever) - and
those of us with imperfect ears are likely to hear songs wrong. (There are
three notes not two? It's rising and *then* falling, not the other way
around?) WIth the spectrogram, you can "see" the sound as it plays, making
it a lot easier to hear it right. It's a bit eerie and exciting if you've
been hearing the song incorrectly and then start hearing the same recording
differently. A pleasure denied to those of you with great ears. My
sympathies ;-)
Since the other day, I also saw a new app announced that's taking an
interesting approach to bird sounds. Instead of trying to be a full field
guide with plates, etc. it's an app with nothing but sounds. So, sounds but
in a usable arrangement for people with the right kind of device. Some of
you may be familiar with www.birdsounds.nl. As far as I know, they're the
most comprehensive commercial vendor of bird sounds on CD. CDs are an
increasingly inconvenient format so Birdsounds seem to be moving towards
downloads and now apps. There's a free "lite" version of the Costa Rica app
(presumably the first in a series) that lets you see the features and try
it out with a handful of sounds. They've got recordings with recoding
information and black-and-white spectrograms. I'm hoping that they move
forward with this approach as it would really fill in a gap for those
locations (most of the world) where there are paper field guides but no
electronic field guides.
I'd love to hear more from people that have learned how to use spectrograms
with bird calls and how it's helped them. It's hard to imagine any single
way of becoming a better birder than becoming better at bird call
identification.
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