BREAKING NEWS!! "The Raven Lite" software program I rave about is now FREE, as of September 2006. Download it directly from the Website of the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/RavenLite/RavenLite.html).

Seeing Bird Songs

You truly have to see birdsong to believe all that birds do. At the following sites are reproduced some of the sonagrams from The Singing Life of Birds. At Audubon Magazine, you can play the songs (as wav files) as you watch the sonagrams. At the WICN archived interview, you can view 10 of the gorgeous sonagram pages from my book and read their accompanying legends; to listen to the songs, listen to the interview and then match the songs with the sonagrams at the appropriate time. Read what Herb Wilson has to say in the Portland Press Herald about the joys of seeing birdsongs.

Audubon Magazine. The Oldest Music. March 2005.

Here's a web exclusive on The Singing Life of Birds, from Audubon Magazine, in an article entitled "The Oldest Music". Go here to understand the power of seeing songs as you listen.

Illustrated are the song graphs (i.e., sonagrams) of six species: 1) the black-capped chickadees, including the hey-sweetie songs of North America and the sweetie-hey songs of Martha's Vineyard; 2) the drink-your-teeeeeee songs of the eastern towhee, with three different songs from a single male; 3) songs of an adult and a baby Bewick's wren, illustrating how baby songbirds babble just like we humans babble when we're learning to speak; 4) the song sparrow, showing two different songs from the repertoire of a single male; 5) the (eastern) winter wren, with one of the most remarkably complex songs in the world; and 6) the dawn music of the eastern wood-pewee, showing the two daytime songs, pee-ah-wee and wee-ooo, and the extra song used at dawn, the ah-di-dee.

Watch the sonagrams as you listen to the songs on this web site, and you'll appreciate anew the saying that "Seeing is believing."

WICN Public Radio. New England's Jazz & Folk Station.
Inquiry, hosted by Mark Lynch.
Guest: Donald Kroodsma
Topic: Book - "The Singing Life of Birds"
Archived at http://www.wicn.org/programs/inquiry.htm
More details for this event are provided under "Featured here" (see above)

For some of the most beautiful pictures of bird songs you've ever seen, go to this web site and click on any one of the 10 species listed there. Up on your screen will pop a sonagram figure and legend from the book. Figures for the following 10 species can be found here: White-crowned Sparrow, Northern Mockingbird, Alder Flycatcher, Three-wattled Bellbird, Sedge Wren (North America), Marsh Wren (eastern North America), Marsh Wren (western North America), Black-capped Chickadee, Blue Jay, and Brown Thrasher.

Portland Press Herald, May 6, 2005
BIRDING: Reason to rejoice: Affordable sonagrams, ivory-bills
By Herb Wilson
http://outdoors.mainetoday.com/naturewatching/birding050508.shtml

In the last column, I sang the praises of Don Kroodsma's new book, the "Singing Life of Birds." One of the most valuable features of Kroodsma's books is the many sonagrams of bird vocalizations (provided on the accompanying CD).

Sonagrams graphic depictions of animal sounds by plotting the frequency of the sounds through time provide a powerful means of comparing and contrasting sounds. One can quantify slight differences in pitch, duration of phrases and other subtle differences in sounds.

Before 1990, sonagrams were produced by a rather large and clunky machine called a Kay sonagraph. The sonagraph produced an accurate printout of the sonagram of a particular vocalization. As a stand-alone machine, a sonagraph cannot compare sounds for an investigator. A person had to make the comparisons visually.

Despite these limitations, the Kay sonagraph proved to be a boon for the study of avian sound. Ornithologists recorded bird sounds on tapes and made countless sonagrams for various research projects.

With the rapid development of desktop computers in the 1980s, it was only a matter of time before sound analysis software became available for ornithologists and other bioacoustic researchers. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, with support from the National Science Foundation, released software called Canary in the mid-1990s.

One uploaded a recording of a bird into the software as a digital file. Canary could then prepare a sonagram of the vocalization. Canary allowed researchers to alter the speed of the vocalization to better appreciate components of a vocalization. Sonagrams could be created more quickly and with less fuss than one could accomplish with a Kay sona- graph. Canary allowed a user to compare similarities of two vocalizations using the power of the computer.

Canary was developed for the Macintosh platform and hence not useful for people with PC computers. Last year, Cornell announced a new and improved software application for the analysis of natural sounds. Canary evolved into Raven.

Raven is considerably more sophisticated than Canary, allowing the user more choices in the development of sonagrams and in the analysis of those sona- grams. Raven runs on both the Windows and Macintosh (OS X) platforms. This software has been developed particularly for scientists pursuing bioacoustics research. Although Raven is of potential interest to birders, the cost of $400 is daunting.

Recognizing the need for a more affordable version of Raven for the birding community, the Cornell Bioacoustics Lab has recently released Raven Lite. This version allows a user to open and analyze bird sounds (or any other sound file for that matter) in a number of formats (wav, mp3, aiff and even tracks directly from an audio CD).

For instance, a user can slow down the song of a wood thrush to better appreciate the "self-harmony" that this bird can accomplish with its double syrinx. You can make a sonagram of the songs of species whose identification by ear is challenging. The sonagram becomes a musical score. By following the score during a musical performance, one's ears pick up more of the music. Your eyes help your ears to hear.

The best feature of Raven Lite is the cost: only $25 for either the Windows or Macintosh version. Raven Lite does not have all the bells and whistles of Raven. Unless you are pursuing bioacoustics research, Raven Lite will give you all you need and more to better learn and analyze bird vocalizations. You can find more information on Raven Lite and download a demo version.