Nowadays, all good birders have some knowledge of bird songs.
In most habitats, the vast majority of birds are not visible, and
hearing songs and calls provides a way to sample these habitats.
In the BBS, most identifications of birds are by songs or calls.
Here, we present songs and calls of birds in WAV format. To
speed download time, the files are also presented in a shortened
format.
In many ways, surveying a BBS route is a test of the commitment and
capabilities of a birder. Aside from the physical difficulties of
getting to the starting point of the route before dawn and conducting
the 50 counts, the observer must be able to quickly and correctly
identify the species of birds present at each stop. One skill that
separates BBS observers from most birders is their knowledge of bird
sounds. Most of the birds counted in the BBS are never even seen by the
observers, who often identify species based on single songs or chip notes.
Achieving this level of skill requires an enormous amount of committment
and training.
Recognizing this need for information of bird songs, Robbins et al.
(1983) provided sonagrams based on field recordings of birds. There
are also many commercially available recordings of bird songs. In this part
of the Home Page, we make available recordings of selected North American
birds. These recordings are from 2 sources: (1) recordings made by Chandler
S. Robbins, and (2) recordings made by John Sauer and others in the United
States and Mexico. Recordings were transferred from tape to a digital file
(.wav) format.
When you click on a species name, the server will try to transfer
the song file to your computer. If your brower is prepared to accept
songs, it should automatically store the file and call up your
sound recording and playback program. Please note--If you
do not have a sound card
and software that can play songs in this format, then you will not be able
to use this part of the Home Page!
These songs represent our first try at converting the sounds to computer
files, and some of the editing shows our lack of experience. Please bear
with us, and let us know whether the sounds are of use to you. Also,
we are very interested in developing a more-extensive repertoire
of songs. If you have some high quality bird recordings on casette that
you would be willing to either introduce into the public domain or allow limited
use, we will
be happy to scan them into computer files and make them available to users
of the Home Page. Of course, any contributors will be acknowledged on
the Home Page.
Anyone wishing to copy these items should recognize that they remian the
property of the recorders, and we are using them with permission. Other
uses of the songs would require permission of the recorders.
Literature Cited
Robbins, C. S, B. Bruun, and H. S. Zim. 1983. Birds of North America.
Golden Press, New York. 360pp.