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 Reviews
Publisher's Weekly, Boxed Review, 2/21/2005 Kroodsma, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, shares what he's learned from more than three decades of recording and analyzing the songs of birds in this intriguing, instructional book. Using "sonagrams" (also known as sound spectrograms, they plot a sound's frequency over time), he illustrates the songs of 30 birds, from the familiar American robin to the exotic three-wattled bellbird of Costa Rica. He considers how birds acquire their songs (some species learn them; others have their tunes "encoded somehow in the nucleotide sequences of the DNA"), what makes the songs unique, what functions they serve, and how they've evolved. No two species sound alike, of course, but groups of birds within each species have their own dialects, and individual birds have their own repertoires as well. A CD of the bird songs discussed is included, as are descriptions of the recording equipment Kroodsma used and explanations on how to make similar recordings and "sonagrams." Kroodsma is a warm, encouraging guide to the world of birdsong, and his enthusiasm is contagious. Illus. Agent, Russ Galen. (Apr.) Library Journal, *Starred Review*, 3/15/2005 Anyone who wonders why birds sing, if their songs are learned or inherited, why mockingbirds sing at night, or why some species mimic will find engaging answers in this authoritative and entertaining book on bird vocalizations. Kroodsma (biology, Univ. of Massachusetts) has studied birdsong for over 30 years; here he discusses how songs develop, different bird dialects, extremes of male song, songs in the hour before dawn, and even avian species whose females also sing. His text is augmented by drawings and song graphs (sonograms), the latter diagramming what is heard on the accompanying high-quality CD, which features 98 tracks and the virtue of no narration. A 36-page appendix explains each track, while another appendix details equipment and techniques for recording birds. Highly recommended. . . . --Henry T. Armistead, Free Lib. of Philadelphia 
Science Books & Films, 3/7/2005 The Singing Life of Birds is an excellent introduction to the functional and aesthetic aspects of bird song, dealing with the broader context of how bird songs develop and their role in communication, courtship, and defense of territory. The text is integrated with an accompanying CD containing 98 recordings in CD audio format. A lengthy appendix explains each track in great detail, making it especially useful for teachers to illustrate various aspects of bird song. An introductory section teaches us how to interpret the numerous sonograms, though the book can be used without them. The work includes an extensive bibliography, and indices (not available in the reviewer's proof). Thirty species are analyzed in depth, in a loose topical outline, with the goal of teaching us "how to listen, the meaning in the music, and why should we care". What sets this book apart is how well the author achieves this latter goal. The text reflects thirty years of extensive field and laboratory research, and reads like an intensely personal journey of discovery. The text conveys a wonderful sense of time and place, as well as the wandering path of scientific inquiry. I highly recommend this book for all college and university libraries as well as the general reader. --Bruce E. Fleury, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA Amazon.com Just listened to an interview with the author on NPR which included a number of selections from the accompanying CD, all I can think of is 'how awesome!' The author has spent many years studying and documenting birdsong and makes me realize that what I thought I knew from growing up in the country surrounded by birdsong is a tiny fragment of what I actually was hearing. The CD includes birdsongs at normal speeds and slowed to 1/2 and 1/4 speed, which allows the listener to hear the discreet sounds. The accompanying text includes graphic description of the sounds for a clearer understanding. If you love birds, you will love this! --Laura Allender "Laura" (St. Louis, MO, USA) Amazon.com A masterpiece of avian bioacoustics (Sorry, I just had to use those words). I have a bird outside my window just now singing a song of some kind. I've long thought it was pretty, but thought no more acout it. Now this book has come along and my casual listening has become much more interesting. I found the bird outside my window in the book and sure enough here is a sonogram, a voice print if you will of what the bird sounds like. Further, there is a track on the CD that comes with the book that has this bird's song recorded. It's not exactly like the bird outside the window, but birds (I've learned) are individuals too. Birding is one of the more popular pastimes in this country, and growing quire rapidly. This book would be a supurb gift to any birder, even if you have to give it to yourself. --John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca NV, USA) Amazon.com I was predisposed to like this book, since I love birdsong and have long been drawn to research about it. But this book far exceeded my high expectations. Don Kroodsma takes us through the entire process of listening to a song, thinking up questions about how the species acquired it, and step by step through the process of learning the answer, setting up the sections like little mysteries. He's recognized by the American Ornithologists' Union as an authority on acquisition of birdsong, and although the book is authoritative and scientific, he somehow manages to infuse every paragraph with his own sense of wonder and joy in his subject. This book may look like a textbook, but it reads like a cross between a mystery novel and lovely poetry. I can't recommend it highly enough. --Laura L. Erickson (Duluth MN, USA) 
Scientific American, May 2005 Just as the colors and patterns of the feathers that birds wear show tremendous variation, so, too, do the songs that they broadcast--but much more so. Songs may be absent, or they may range from a few simple genetically encoded notes endlessly repeated, to virtuosos of variety resulting from copying and learning, and even to seemingly endless improvisation. In The Singing Life of Birds, Donald E. Kroodsma, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, celebrates the diversity through carefully chosen examples, one for each of the 30 years that he has studied birdsong. The book is best described by its subtitle, The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong. Kroodsma shares his secrets--solid, practical advice on how to record bird sounds and how to "see" the sounds in sonagrams, visual representations of the recordings of songs. A compact disc that accompanies the text aids readers in this task. He concludes: "There's no longer any mystique to what I have done all these years. Anyone can do this kind of stuff. And anyone should." His infatuation started with a single male Bewick's wren in his backyard in Oregon. Kroodsma discovered that this one wren sang 16 different songs, and in any singing bout it poured forth 40 to 50 renditions of one of them before switching to another, and then to another, and on and on. Meanwhile neighboring wrens hearing the song replied with the same one, while distant males sang other songs. Why? The proximal answers to why birds sing and what they sing run from the trivial to the fascinating: they enjoy it, they are primed by hormones that activate neuronal pathways, they respond to neighbors. But the ultimate, evolutionary question of why they sing and what they sing can be answered only by the comparative study of many species. Sometimes the anomalies provide a clue. For example, most individual wrens of different species learn many songs, and neighboring birds have similar songs--that is, they have dialects. The sedge wren of North America is an exception, however. Unlike other wrens and the sedge wrens of Central and South America, it has lost the ability to learn songs; it can only improvise on songs that are inscribed on its DNA. It is therefore unable to "match" the songs of its neighbors, and no dialects are found. So what is different about the North American sedge wrens in respect to other wrens? They are nomads that live in unpredictable habitat--meadows that can quickly dry up. As a consequence, these birds can never predict who their neighbors will be from one season to the next; hence, learning songs as youngsters for later use in song matching is pointless. Contrast this to the bellbird, a long-lived tropical bird in which individuals come to know one another well. These birds listen to one another all year long and learn the changes in others' songs throughout life. The young birds learn the latest of these variations, and the dialect of the population changes from year to year. Kroodsma takes us repeatedly into the field, into the birds' world. He shares an all-night vigil with a whip-poor-will, tallying 20,898 identical repetitions of its one song for the entire night. He describes a brown thrasher that in one two-hour session sang 4,654 songs, 1,800 of them different (many borrowed from neighbors of other species). We enter the mind of the researcher as he tries to penetrate the mind of the bird. As much as we humans may enjoy the spectacle of birds flaunting their gaudy garb to the accompaniment of vocalizations and dancelike antics, the show is meant primarily to attract females. It is about sex--about who will be the father of the female's chicks. The males presumably enjoy putting on their show, but whatever else it may do for them (such as serving as a territorial marker), it is the females who have shaped the performance by their tastes and preferences, and these are as various as the 10,000 or so species of birds. Kroodsma emphasizes that we know little about why one or another bird has a specific repertoire. Yet despite the dazzling variety, it appears to me that all birdsongs have general requirements and constraints, and I believe that these shared characteristics may in themselves shed some light on the enigma. The primary requirement of a species' display song is that it must stand out from environmental noise--that is, it must carry--and it must be distinct from competing voices on the stage. Once females reward a specific song type with mating, then success breeds success, and whatever it is that attracts, the male that has more of it enjoys a huge advantage. But singing is not cheap: the performers are conspicuous to predators, and the displays are so costly in time and energy that the performers may appear to handicap themselves. I doubt, however, that it is the flaunting of handicap as such that attracts the females ("I am so strong and healthy that I have energy to waste on singing"). The singer must cater to the females' taste. As in our own fashions of clothing and music, there is not necessarily rhyme or reason in the specifically chosen attribute, except the most important one--it works. Konrad Lorenz reputedly said that birdsong is "more beautiful than necessary." It seems to me that it is just as likely that the flamboyant displays of song and dance, of feathers and, in the bowerbirds, of decorated love shacks are indeed necessary, because females compare, and they are picky. Arbitrary though their criteria of choice may be, it is significant that we humans also find many of the same displays beautiful. --Bernd Heinrich is professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and author of many popular books on science. Among the most recent are The Geese of Beaver Bog, Winter World and Mind of the Raven. 
Birdchat. 4/11/2005 I'm in the middle of one of the very best bird books I've ever read: The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsma. It's designed and laid out something like a textbook but reads like a cross between poetry and a mystery novel, as we follow Don questioning how songbirds learn their songs. We follow his quest for answers as he learns that most songbirds learn their songs--some from their fathers and immediate neighbors during their nesting/fledging stages, some after they've moved on to their own territories farther afield--and that most sub-oscine passerine songs are genetic and unalterable. Then Don goes into an exploration of why there are exceptions to both rules. He delves into the complexities of what we know about bird song and dialects (much thanks to his own research), and explains in a thorough and rich way his own techniques for analyzing bird song, managing to preserve and even enhance our appreciation of the beauty and magic of bird song even as we learn to appreciate how its scientific analysis contributes to evolutionary biology and natural history. There are also wonderful anecdotes, like one with Don bringing a brood of Sedge Wren nestlings onboard airplanes and tenderly feeding them in the bathroom, needing to verify in a controlled captive setting what he first spent years documenting in the field. I've been passionately interested in bird song since I started birding and searched out every singer of every song I heard, and then took ornithology classes and started reading scientific papers about the origins of bird song. I've taken the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's fantastic field recording course, where Don Kroodsma gave one lecture and accompanied us in the field one day--that was one of the most interesting and valuable weeks of my life. So I was predisposed to love this book. But the writing is so engaging, the topic presented in such a thorough yet riveting way, that I think anyone with a mind and ears will find the book equally fascinating and valuable. BirdTimes THE SINGING LIFE OF BIRDS explores how and why birds sing and how we can better understand them through their songs. The books provides 'sonagrams' - picture voiceprints - of various birdsongs. Like a musical score, these sonagrams display frequency changes throughout time, revealing the tone, rhythm, change, and diversity present in these magical melodies. A wood thrush has two voice boxes and sings complex tunes simultaneously. The hermit thrush sings nine different songs. The whippoorwill sings more than 20,000 songs in one night. Birds, like humans, have dialects that change from one place to another. They learn their songs from parents, some are born with the songs encoded in their DNA, and some borrow songs from other birds. Outside Magazine Why do birds suddenly appear? And why do they make such a racket? A flock of new books explores the surprisingly mysterious world of birdsong. THE SINGING LIFE OF BIRDS:THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LISTENING TO BIRDSONG (Houghton Mifflin, $28), by renowned ornithologist Donald Kroodsma, is part memoir, part audio field guide (complete with CD). Journalist Don Stap, meanwhile, follows Kroodsma and colleague Greg Budney from Massachusetts to Costa Rica as they record the bizarre musical stylings of the three-wattled bellbird and others, in BIRDSONG: A NATURAL HISTORY (Scribner, $24). And musician and philosophy professor David Rothenberg, in WHY BIRDS SIGN: A JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF BIRD SONG (Basic, $26), looks at how birds' melodies affect humans, and vice versa. Associated Press A number of new books attempt to explain the birds and the bees - but probably not the way you're thinking. Birds' tweets and bees' treats are the focus of volumes that explore the sweet songs made by birds and the sweet honey made by bees. These books are among the latest hardcovers, which also include novels by Ian McEwan, Alice Hoffman and Nicholas Sparks, and nonfiction by Bob Dole, Jane Fonda and Jack Welch. One of three new books about birdsong is "The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong" (Houghton Mifflin). Donald Kroodsma, a longtime student of the subject, examines how, why, when and where birds sing. He tells why usually only the male sings, why some birds sing better than others, and why some birdsongs are especially complex, long or beautiful. Included is an audio CD with 98 birdsongs corresponding to those plotted in the text. In "Birdsong: A Natural History" (Scribner), author Don Stap follows Kroodsma from Maine to Costa Rica to listen to birds and record their music. Topics discussed en route include how birds learn their songs, why some birds have only one song and others have as many as 2,000, how songs vary within species, regional dialects, and the influence of birdsong on classical musicians . . . The Birmingham News I love spring rains. OK, not continuous, every day, hard spring rains. I like the spring rains that make birds sing. I'm not exactly sure why they sing during and after some rains and not others, but I've noticed that they do. I think if the rain is soft enough for people to walk in, it's soft enough for birds to sing in. This week as I drove home from work listening to our National Public Radio above the roar of diesel engines and honking cars, I was fascinated by an interview with two well known ornithologists. They were being interviewed about their work with birds and bird songs. Listening to the recordings they had made of different bird songs had me wishing for another late afternoon shower. Their work was fascinating. I stopped at the nearest Books-A-Million and picked up a copy of the new book by Donald Kroodsma, The Singing Life of Birds, the Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong. Perhaps I can find the answer to why birds sing in the rain. I suspect it's just for fun. The book also includes a compact disc of recordings of bird songs. Larry Quick, The Birmingham News, 4/2/2005 Eugene (Oregon) Register Guard, 4/21/05 Our grandson Caleb is awake "before the chickens" and since we rise early at our house, we can relieve his parents by joining him during visits so they can sleep in later. If we step outside in that predawn hour this time of year, we're certain to hear the songbirds as they begin to greet the day. Caleb's mom and dad are missing an array of birdsongs in our neighborhood that is second to none. We hear robins, of course, then chickadees and wrens, and soon the woods are filled with the sound of varied thrush, spotted towhees, warblers, Steller's jays, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and others. We also have a new tool to help us understand songbird behavior that has increased our enjoyment of spring. "The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong" (Houghton-Mifflin, 2005) - a book and companion CD by Donald Kroodsma - is perfect for springtime reading and listening pleasure. With extraordinary dedication to science and art, Kroodsma has become one the world's experts on bird songs. As one reviewer wrote, "he understands birdsongs better than the birds do themselves." Some of Kroodsma's discoveries were made in Oregon when he was starting his career just north of us on the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge. While studying Bewick's wren, found there in large numbers, he began an ambitious song-recording study. This new field of scientific endeavor is called "avian bioacoustics," and has been made possible with the advent of portable recording devices and the sonograph. With recordings in hand, Kroodsma was able to create sonograms, visual displays of the songs he recorded. He banded and studied more than 300 wrens, and discovered that although young wrens learn how to sing from their parents, once they leave the nest and establish their own territory, they adopt the "local dialect" of the birds bordering their habitat. A recording of Kroodsma's daughter making "baby talk" is contrasted with a fledgling chickadee just learning to sing. The similarity in their nonsense sounds as compared to adults of their species is uncanny. Some of the birds Kroodsma has included, such as loons, mockingbirds and jays, have an astounding array of songs, and "seeing" the songs on the pages of the book while hearing them on the CD is a remarkable new approach to enjoying birds. This would be a perfect book to give the "fledgling" scientist in your family. It is a field of study that allows budding scientists to do-it-yourself with very little equipment. It may bring them out of bed at an early hour, that magic time when the birds begin to greet the new day, and at the very least, they will learn to listen to birds in a new way. And when you hear a young chickadee, maybe you'll recognize its earliest attempts to sing. --STEPHEN ANDERSON is a freelance writer who lives in Eugene. He may be reached by e-mail at hg@guardnet.com.  The Chattanooga Pulse It's spring, and the city is a singles bar for birds. Cardinals croon from the old oaks. A delegation of doves greets each dawn. Mockingbirds sing sweetly from the telephone polesat three in the morning. Wouldn't it be nice to know how and why they sing? Wouldn't you like to identify the song bird that wakes you up in the morning? (If you're going to curse him, you'd might as well call him by name.) Ornithologist Donald Kroodsma has the book for you. For 30 years, he has studied birds, getting up in the middle of the night to record them, taking notes on the regional dialects of bird calls, sneaking away from family reunions and vacations to listen to birds. He has researched how mated pairs communicate, and how birds learn to sing. (Is it genetic? Is it cultural? The answer: it's both.) All this research has resulted in The Singing Life of Birds, a whopping 365 pages (with appendix), plus a 98 track CD of bird songs. One of the tracks Terry Gross played it on NPR's Fresh Air is Kroodsma's daughter babbling incoherently. He compares this to the halting song of a young Bewick's wren, who is likewise just learning bird language. The whimsical nature of this track is repeated throughout the book. The Singing Life of Birds is full of facts and statistics. (A reader who is failing college statistics, like this reviewer, may want to skip them.) But in between the numbers is pure poetry. Kroodsma is rigorously scientific; page after page of notes, year after year of field time, went into this book. But it's easy to read between the lines and see that he is a man in love with birds. Why else would he give up sleep, donuts, and central heating to slog through a swamp after owls? He's in love, and if you take the time to get to know the birds, you might be too. The Detroit News This was a great winter for bird watching. The snow cover brought the birds out in droves, and its white blanket made them stand out for easy viewing. The more I watched the birds over the winter the more I wondered what they do when they weren't eating at our feeders. I want to encourage birds into my garden because they are not only pretty to look at and delightful to listen to, they eat lots of bugs. Even the seedeaters collect bugs in spring to feed to their young. So having them around can put a serious dent in the pest population. If you've ever listened to a bird singing atop a tree and wondered what he or she was chirping about, "The Singing Life of Birds" (Houghton Mifflin, $28) is the book for you. For centuries, man has questioned why birds sing and what they are saying, and in this book, author, scientist and renowned ornithologist Donald Kroodsma takes his readers on a listening adventure to help us understand the living dramas going on in our back yards. He puts his reader inside the minds of song birds, exploring not only the how and why they sing, but also how we can better understand them through their songs. Some birds sing in dialects, while other have but a single song. Some sing during the day, but others chirp only at night. And, why do the males of the species do most of the singing? Kroodsma, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, shares the answers to these and other burning questions in this intriguing, instructional book, which he has compiled from information he has garnered over more than three decades of recording and analyzing the birds' songs. Included is a high-quality CD featuring bird songs taped at normal speeds and slowed to 1/2 and 1/4 speeds, allowing listeners to pick up sounds that will help with interpretation. E (Environment) Magazine, May/June "On a journey that is scientific and artistic, personal and purposeful, DONALD KROODSMA seeks to discover why some birds sing and others don't; and whether their songs are inherited through genes or learned through observation. In THE SINGING LIFE OF BIRDS: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong (Houghton Mifflin, $28 with CD), Kroodsma describes his travels around the globe, studying the behaviour of birds and the physics of their songs. His lyrical, informal prose is accompanied by scientific diagrams of pitches and notes - musical transcriptions written in kilohertz rather than eighth notes. The accompanying CD includes the songs of many of the world's most famous species." Portland Press Herald, April 24, 2005 Spring migration is beginning to build momentum. Each day a few new voices join the morning chorus in yards, woods and fields. This time of year is appropriate for the publication of a new book on bird vocalizations. The book, by Donald Kroodsma, is titled "The Singing Life of Birds (The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong)." It's hard to contain my excitement about this book. Kroodsma is a recently retired professor at the University of Massachusetts. For nearly 40 years, he has been studying various aspects of bird vocalizations. The scientific study of animal sounds is called bioacoustics, and Kroodsma is one of the pre-eminent bioacousticians in North America. His breadth and depth of experience in the study of bird sound are evident in this informative book. The highly readable book is not strictly organized topic by topic like a review volume. Rather, Kroodsma recounts his own research projects over the past 30 years. These studies have taken him across North America and to Central America. Kroodsma has worked on a variety of species and sought answers to a broad array of questions about bird vocalizations. The personal accounts are grouped logically into chapters on "How Songs Develop," "Dialects," "Extremes of Male Song," "The Hour Before Dawn" and "She Also Sings." Kroodsma presents firsthand information on many species in each of these chapters. By the time you finish the book, you will have a thorough introduction to the study of bird bioacoustics. You will become aware of what we know about the function of bird vocalizations as well as the rather large gaps in our understanding. The organization of the book as a series of personal accounts makes the research come alive. The reader is able to see how Kroodsma and his collaborators cleverly designed ways to collect data to answer their questions. The reader will also see the trials and tribulations of field research. One of the aspects of Kroodsma's research that I most admire is his willingness to ask "big questions." We know that most of the male songbirds (usually called the oscines, a suborder of perching bird order Passeriformes) learn the appropriate song for their species from a tutor. Often the tutor is their father but sometimes not, as Kroodsma shows us for Bewick's wren. In the flycatchers (the suboscine passeriforms), their less complex songs are encoded genetically. Kroodsma is willing to ask the question why. Why do flycatchers have songs that need not be learned while the songbirds must be taught? It's a tough question to answer, but Kroodsma provides some thought-provoking insight. The book comes with a CD of 98 tracks of bird vocalizations, all discussed in the text. In the text, Kroodsma also provides sonagrams (visual depictions of sounds) for each track. By the time you work through the text, you will be adept at listening with your eyes. Just as a musician can hear a tune in her head by reading a sheet of music, you can learn to hear a vocalization in your head by reading a sonagram. Some of the fascinating sounds and sonagrams include those of barred owls (both males and females sing but can be distinguished by a knowledgeable listener), wood thrushes (separating the sounds by the left and right sides of the voicebox or syrinx) and brown thrashers (with a sampling of the remarkable repertoire of more than a thousand different songs a male can sing). This book is published by Houghton-Mifflin. It sells for $28. The Free Lance-Star, Fredricksburg, Virginia. . . . A couple of weeks after returning home, I joined friends at Huntley Meadows Park in Fairfax to hear a Massachusetts scientist talk about the songs of birds and his lifetime learning about them. Donald Kroodsma, an authority on bird vocalizations, led us into the park's wet meadows with the large parabolic "ear" he uses to discover the secrets of avian audio. The voice of a robin or a cardinal outside my window will never sound the same to me again. Kroodsma, aiming his antenna at a singing bird, is able to show how its song starts on high notes and sweeps down to lower ones by shifting from one of its two voice boxes to the other. Yet the human ear detects no shift in the seamless virtuosity of its song. People often ask, he said, whether birds learn their songs or if they are inherited. The answer, he said, is that it depends on the species. Another question he often gets is whether birds can improvise or copy their songs, and the answer, he said, is that some species seem to make it up as they sing, and many can imitate and vary their songs. What's more, individual birds of a kind are distinct in the way they sing, and careful listening often separates one from another. Kroodsma visited Huntley Meadows in connection with the release of his new book, "The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong." The book, which earns my highest recommendation, includes a CD to introduce readers to the intriguing world of the songs of birds. I might add that not only is Kroodsma an authority on this topic, there is absolutely nothing dry and dull about this scientist, either in person or in text. I never had any idea there was so much to discover in the realm of the songs and calls of birds. Wyoming Tribune Eagle (Cheyenne). Studying the science of birdsong. "The Singing Life of Birds, The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong" By Donald Kroodsma (Houghton Mifflin, $28) Donald KroodsmaŐs "The Singing Life of Birds, The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong," has been released at this most appropriate season. More birds sing in the spring than any other time of year, but the drawback is birdwatchers will be out in the midst of migration rather than reading a book. And itŐs a big book - 480 pages. The good news is that the author is a storyteller as well as a scientist. . . . [Read the entire review at the above website] Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York One of the joys of spring is the annual revival of birdsong. Birdsong may be the only form of daily entertainment that is absolutely free, although people who buy hundreds of pounds of sunflower seeds each year to feed the entertainers may argue that the entertainment actually does have its price. So what? It's worth every penny. And this spring birdsong has become a hallelujah chorus of sorts to celebrate the discovery that the ivory billed woodpecker, thought to be long extinct, lives on in Arkansas and, let us hope, elsewhere. The rediscovery of the ivory billed woodpecker, having been last seen some 60 years ago and listed as extinct in most if not all bird manuals, is a testament to the value of wild and natural places undisturbed by loggers, oil drillers, strip miners and mall developers. Back to the singing birds. Sure they sound great, except perhaps for a sunrise serenade by a squabble of crows outside your bedroom window, but how many of us can identify the individual vocalists? The mourning doves are easy, as are the cardinals, and the chickadees, with their self-identifying calls, but what about the myriad warblers who prefer to be heard but not seen? And compounding the problem is the fact that birds are not Johnny One Notes. Some of them have more songs in their repertoire than Cole Porter even dreamed of. Don't take my word for it, but do pay attention to Donald Kroodsma, a University of Massachusetts biologist who has studied birdsong for more than 30 years and has poured his knowledge into a new book, The Singing Life of Birds, The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong, 495p., Houghton Mifflin $28. The book comes with a 98-track birdsong CD. Kroodsma's book is indeed scientific, abounding with graphs, and it is technical. But it is also highly readable. Sample: "Some of the sweetest sounds I have heard have been from young birds just a few weeks old. In the 'bird nursery' of our house, we'd stuff the babies full of food, and in their satiated state, the males in the group would often fluff up their feathers, doze lightly, and practice their singing." And if you believe the claim that birds sing the same old tune over and over, be advised that Kroodsma once recorded a versatile brown thrasher that had a repertoire of 2,400 distinctly different songs. Two other bird books are new on the market this spring, also from Houghton Mifflin . . . Rossie is associate editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin. His column appears on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Write to him c/o P.O. Box 1270, Binghamton, N.Y. 13902-1270. Boston Globe May 13, 2005 Books on Science, by Antony Doerr Read the full review here: Excerpts: Enter ornithologist Donald Kroodsma's big, engaging book, ''The Singing Life of Birds." Kroodsma attacks bird songs as if they were code, listening astutely and scrutinizing sonograms (graphic representations of songs) with devoted attention. . . .Kroodsma not only wants to unravel the tangles of notes, he wants to know why an individual bird is making the decisions he makes, why more hisselys at dawn than midday, why a piik here and a tut there. ''The Singing Life" addresses hundreds of fascinating questions: How does a bird acquire its vocabulary? What are the functions of those sounds? What is the evolutionary history of the songs of a species? And how do birds make song? Along the way you get to meet sedge wrens and whippoorwills and a brown thrasher that in one two-hour session sang 4,654 songs, almost half of them different. Prose, with its meetchas and jrrrts and pee-ah-wees, is not, of course, the ideal medium for reproducing and discussing birdsong. Thankfully Kroodsma's book includes a CD tucked into the back cover. Everything -- the sonograms, Kroodsma's ardor, your own backyard -- makes more sense with the CD playing. The other pleasure of ''The Singing Life" is that it is as much an autobiography as an ornithological study. Starting with his graduate-school absorption with Bewick's wrens in Oregon, Kroodsma walks his reader through 30 years of research in rain forests and swamps and prairies around the world. His CD, in a sense, is the same thing: 98 tracks, 98 chapters of a life. As you read and listen, you get a series of privileged glimpses into a world of leg bands and mist nets, sunrises and sonograms. New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester) Excerpt: "Anyone who enjoys birds and wishes to know more about birdsong can set off on a delightful adventure by reading Kroodsma's 496-page book, "The Singing Life of Birds." HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, Have you ever wished you could distinguish the song of a wood thrush from that of a hermit thrush? Kroodsma's new book combines his personal observations of birds with scientific descriptions of how they develop their songs. Accompanying diagrams show the pitch and relative loudness of the notes in a bird's song, and the book includes a CD with nearly 100 different examples. Kroodsma's enthusiasm will help even novice bird-listeners appreciate the subtle harmonies of their feathered friends. Full review available at http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=15558 Arizona Republic (Phoenix) "A peculiar thing happened when we played the CD that comes with this book. The resident house cat roused herself from slumber, rushed into the room and sat trembling below the CD player, staring up at it with impassioned eyes. It occurred to us then: This must be how Donald Kroodsma looks when he hears a bird in the field, although his motives are nobler and his mood is something akin to joy. Kroodsma is one of the world's foremost ornithologists and an expert on bird song, which he calls "the finest natural music on the planet." In this book, which is part memoir and part treatise on how and why birds make such varied and intricate sounds, he offers the secret of listening: It's all in the eyes. If you imagine sonograms, you'll hear bird song perfectly. Kroodsma's love for his subject began 30 years ago when he heard a Bewick's wren singing in the back yard. Kroodsma's book is a record of his travels since, told through the stories of 30 birds. It's for scientists, birders and others who find beauty in the sounds of the natural world." (Reprinted May 25 in the Helena Independent Record (Montana) and the May 24 Austin American Statesman (Texas). The Sun (Bremerton, WA): Excerpt: "When Donald Kroodsma's book, "The Singing Life of Birds," arrived, I looked at it as one might eye a book on how to take out your tonsils. I wasn't enthusiastic. The charted bird songs on its pages were intimidating. They looked like sheet music written in a foreign language. First impressions can be very wrong and my first impression of this book was just that. I love this book." Ralph Magazine Excerpt: "Comes now Donald Kroodsma to tell us that you can record them, the mockingbirds, and all the others, if you must, but you are better off not to start. He says it will take you over, you will find yourself in some strange neighborŐs strange backyard at dawn trying to capture the sound of the black-capped chickadee, the eastern winter wren, the red-eyed vireo, the towhee, the tufted titmouse--a godwit god knows. In this 500 page gorgon of a book, complete with CD, youŐll find out everything you ever want to know about those songs that drift about us . . ." Science News The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong -- Donald Kroodsma Why do birds sing? Well, mostly to attract females--the crooners are usually male. The choir may be all of one sex, but the repertoire of each member varies greatly. Furthermore, each species has its own songs, and some birds modify that music as well as pick up songs from other species. Kroodsma recounts the example of a brown thrasher that in a 2-hour period sang 1,800 different songs. The author instructs readers on how to listen to a bird's song from the perspectives of both another bird and of a scientist. He explains how birds acquire their songs, what makes songs unique, and how and why the songs differ between locales. Also included is a CD with 98 tracks of birdsongs, all of which are explained in an appendix in the book. Another appendix tells readers how to record birdsongs, including details on the equipment needed. Houghton Mifflin, 448 p., b&w illus, CD, hardcover, $28.00. Birder's World Excerpts: |
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