Friday, June 06, 2008

Bird Audio


Director of Bird Conservation, Jeff Mollenhauer, and seasonal naturalist, Denise Ecker, have been busy recording bird vocalizations this week at the Audubon Center at Francis Beidler Forest. The equipment they are using consists of a Marantz PMD660 (an audio recorder that records in digital audio formats onto a Compact Flash memory card) and a Sennheiser ME 66 (a shotgun microphone). The goal of this project is to create an audio library of sounds at Beidler Forest. These sounds can be used to create CDs for the gift shop, train seasonal naturalists how to identify birds, and for playbacks to attract/capture birds for research purposes.

Just like humans, many bird species also develop regional dialects. Carolina Wrens, White-eyed Vireos, and Prothonotary Warblers are just a few of our species that have picked up a southern drawl. By creating an audio library for Beidler Forest, we will be recording important information about the dialects of the bird species here in this amazing forest. Be sure to click on the samples below to hear some of their best work this week.

Carolina Wren (hear it)

White-eyed Vireo (hear it)

Prothonotary Warbler (hear it)

Image by Mark Musselman

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