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:
Thnks
Kroodsma's books are excellent.
Janey S., Seattle
I have D. Kroodsma's books....Great.
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
Yes, but more difficult to read one song sparrow subsp. vs. another one, correct?
Blane Hardesty
Yes, Nathan is excellent....I've heard him speak.
Song sparrows sound diff here in Chicago than your area, I think.....Billy in Chicago
Song sparrows sound diff here in Chicago than your area, I think.....Billy in Chicago
Thanks for the article, warbler man
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