This year “began” when I got back from vacation, to see a curve-billed thrasher on 1/14 with Paul coming to a feeder in MN! Admittedly, much of the rest of the year was a drought, with some crucial misses. Just as the birding demoralization was setting in, though, it came time for our trip out west! […]

We got to my family’s beach house this evening and saw a really close red-throated loon off our dock…and for the first time ever, I saw some red on the throat!

We’ve been playing with ways to construct networks according to graph theory, ultimately using the R package igraph to investigate wetland connectivity. I can’t reveal too much here because it’s my current research in progress! 🙂 The part of the process I’m currently trying to make more efficient is how to calculate distances for each […]

An interesting topic came up about the virtues of birding without binoculars. I have only really done this when I’ve forgotten my binoculars but had some desire/need to go out anyway. One time, it ended up being a fun exercise for someone I was mentoring in their beginning birding journey. First off, it’s humbling: you’re […]

I finally wrote a post that fits all of my blog categories! 🙂 Years ago, Dr. T. Mitchell Aide visited my former lab and I had an opportunity to meet with him. Hearing about his work with automated classification of bird calls first got my mind churning about how we can use ARU’s for gathering […]

This is not an exhaustive list of open source tools and programs to produce spectrograms; if you have a favorite I missed, please add it in the comments! Tools Python: some tutorials and example scripts using the following libraries… NumPy, SciPy and matplotlib Custom functions written with numpy Pylab WarbleR Programs Baudline Sonic Visualizer Friture Music Lab

I took a dive into iPhone apps that produce spectrograms of recorded sound, with an interest in bird song (of course). I got into spectrograms looking at the figures in Handbook of Bird Biology. I’m mainly looking for something that I can match to Field Guide to Bird Sounds, with the thought that this could […]

Like anything else, learning bird songs takes practice and close attention. Here are some resources and my experiences that may help guide you. How I Learned Mnemonic/Sound Pattern Recognition: When I took ornithology in undergrad, we used Peterson’s Birding by Ear which groups songs by characteristics and thereby teaches you to listen for broad characteristics, […]

I’ve started a game on Twitter, running weekly with the hash tag: #namethatbirdsong Every Weds 12pm I’ll post a bird song, and you tweet your own original (or post for a friend with attribution) mnemonic device, that differs from the widely accepted mnemonics taught for the posted bird song (#altmnemonic) along with the game hash […]

Thanks to a conversation with my friend, Dr. Kaitlin Stack Whitney, over Twitter, I learned that there’s an entire field of study that is poised to look formally into some of the concepts that have been nebulously floating about in my mind about how we process bird songs. Most recently, I’ve been interested in mnemonics, […]