Thursday, October 11, 2012

Warbler Guy, where do I learn about "reading" warbler songs (sonograms or spectrograms)? Is Warbler song easy to "read?"

Kathy, there's a one-stop shopping venue for all your edification needs: earbirding.com

Here, Nathan Pieplow, an erudite sound recordist and expert birder, highlights many "ear birding"
elements, including ways for you to easily read sonograms/spectrograms.

This site is so good that it gets a top rating from Warbler Guy's advisory panel: me, myself, and I.

Seriously, reading and interpreting sonograms/spectrograms takes practice, but after a while you can
see the elements upon the page that originally looked like gibberish make sense.

Ergo, you'll quickly have no problems identifying a song sparrow classic song via its sonogram in comparison to a common yellowthroat's, and so on.

Other resources for identifying birds by sound and "ear birding" abound.....Some of my favorite are books by Dr. Donald Kroodsma, who authored the classic:
The Singing Life Of Birds.

9 comments:

  1. Kroodsma's books are excellent.

    Janey S., Seattle

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  2. I have D. Kroodsma's books....Great.

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  3. Nice, but song sparrows seem to have dialects throughout the USA....and I gather it's because there's so many subspecies (24-32 described).

    John Alexander, Richmond

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  4. Yes, but more difficult to read one song sparrow subsp. vs. another one, correct?

    Blane Hardesty

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  5. Yes, Nathan is excellent....I've heard him speak.

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  6. Song sparrows sound diff here in Chicago than your area, I think.....Billy in Chicago

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  7. Song sparrows sound diff here in Chicago than your area, I think.....Billy in Chicago

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  8. Thanks for the article, warbler man

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