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:

Anonymous said...

Thnks

Anonymous said...

Kroodsma's books are excellent.

Janey S., Seattle

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Blane Hardesty

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the article, warbler man