Recording Bird Calls in the Southwest
Have you ever read a bird field guide? Read the bits where they try to describe a bird call? If you have you’ll be familiar with the onomatopoeic translations of the noises a bird makes. In the Australian Bird Guide (the blue book), a Noisy Scrub-bird has its 'amazingly loud, 10 - 20 clear note territorial call' described as a 'building to a brisker and even louder crescendo eg chee chee chee chip-ip-ip-ip chewit'. Read that to yourself out loud. And then see how it compares with the recording below.
Sure, this is an interesting use of language. Perhaps historically the only way some people would get an idea of what a particular bird sounded like. But these days, I think maybe that description is not only is a little superfluous in the face of apps filled with recordings but also just does not do the wonder of bird song (and all the other noises they make) even slight justice.
And I love those sounds. If I think about why I enjoy the birding experience more than I do interactions with other groups of animals or even other kingdoms of beings, I think the significant aural component of their existence really appeals to me. Growing up playing and listening to heaps of music probably had my ears trained a little to be actively listening. And birds the birds are actively calling. It makes sense, shows you were to look, involves you and engulfs you.
So recently I've made a particular effort to focus on those sounds. Not just learn them through the lens of identifying them, or generally appreciate them as a soundscape. I wanted to record them. Make a little library of the sounds I get to hear while I travel through their noisy world and learn the intricacies of the lesser known subspecies that call the same places I do home.
I bought these:
Rode NTG5 Shotgun Microphone Location Recording Kit
IK Multimedia iRig Pre 2
3.5mm female to usb-c male adapter
(and a new phone because my old one was broken)
And plugged all of that straight into my phone.
It records sound in the field using any app you choose including your camera app. It also works with apps like Merlin or BirdNET to help you identify any bird you can hear. I like to use an app called RecForge II Pro which lets me record in .wav. I can upload this straight to my eBird account, output it to my growing google drive library or even play it directly out of a bluetooth speaker if a little bit of playback suits the situation. So so easy.
And here is a wonderful added benefit to having the shotgun microphones directional hearing - when you're listening to what the microphone is picking up through a pair of headphones, very soft calls are amplified back to you and split into stereo so you can pinpoint the direction the calls are coming from. That experience melted me when I was trying to locate the fine 'seep' of a Western Quail-thrush.
Technical stuff aside. This new little side to my birding adventures has me wiggling with excitement when I nail a clean passage of song or amplify some quiet or high pitched contact calls not often heard by humans. I love it.
Maybe soon I'll be pairing all this with crippling video of rarely seen behaviour! Noisy Scrub-birds at full 'chee chee chee chip-ip-ip-ip chewit' crescendo!? Hold. The. (micro)Phone!
If you’d like to come along on a trip to see and hear a Noisy Scrub-bird and the other two members of the notorious 3 skulkers for yourself, check out the 3 day 3 Skulkers Twitch or 8 day Southwest Endemics & Specialties tour here.
