The Sound Approach to Birding: A Guide to Understanding Bird SoundThe Sound Approach to Birding Learn the facts of bird sound while listening to over 200 beautiful exclusive stereo recordings from all over the world. Combining anecdote, scientific theory and practical field experience, The Sound Approach to Birding is a step-by-step guide through tone, pitch, rhythm, reading sonograms, acoustics, and using sounds to age and sex birds. It explains how bird sounds are often the first indication of previously unrecognized taxonomic splits, and explains how to identify them. With The Sound Approach, you can maximize the use of sound in enhancing your field skills, and improve your standards of identification, whatever the level of your experience. |
Contents
Acknowledgements | 11 |
Put it all together and what have you got? | 25 |
Bird recording in an acoustic slum | 49 |
I bird with Bill Smith | 65 |
Hamish taught me all he knows about bird sounds | 87 |
Sex seduction and jumping the neighbours wife | 109 |
Magnus Robb and The Blackcaps | 123 |
Twitching and taxonomy | 133 |
Playback and be damned | 165 |
The sound approach to birding | 173 |
Conclusion | 179 |
Common terms and phrases
adult Arnoud Background Berg bird sounds birders Blackcap breeding Caspian Gull Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs close Common Blackbird Common Chaffinch Fringilla Common Chiffchaff Common Redshank crystallised described distance Eurasian Eurasian Collared Dove European example excitement calls female flight calls forest frequency Garden given giving Gull harmonics hear heard higher identified imitations individual Islands July June kind length less Listen longer look loud Magnus major male March Marsh Warbler migration Netherlands Nightingale Noord-Holland North Northern Bullfinch notes pair passing phrases Pipit pitch plastic song Plover Poland range recording Reed Warbler repertoire Ringed seems separate shape short similar singing sonagram Sound Approach species spring start started subsong Sylvia Tern territory thought Thrush Troglodytes Turdus typically varied Warbler Acrocephalus Warbler Phylloscopus Western whistle Willow Winter Wood Woodpecker young