Technology and the Birds
I was roaming through the numerous bird blogs, and was struck by the popularity of the new hardware (and software) used to issue bird calls to attract birds. Natch, the
rabid engineer/audiophile in me had to break out the drool bucket.
(Literally, from where I sit right now, I can reach out and touch:
Here's my concern: Birds "sing" as a way of communicating information about territory, sex, and safety. If I record songs at one time and under one set of circumstances, and then play them back under a different set of circumstances, I might just be introducing confusion into the creatures' world. Worse yet, I could be playing the "All's clear!" song while a hawk stands at the ready.
So here's the deal... Obviously, there are ornithologists and bird bloggers out there who know far more than I do about using audio technology to attract birds. I appeal to you folks to contact us (the readership of this blog, me, and eBirdseed.com) and give us the skinny concerning the ethics and proper usage of this technology.
Standing with cables in hand... Just waiting to wire the feeders for sound...
CapeCodAlan
P.S. Oh yeah, you folks might like to see a photo or two... How about these?
(Literally, from where I sit right now, I can reach out and touch:
- Three MP3 players
- A 5.1 stereo speaker system
- A very nice Labtec stereo system
- Four computers (two of which are joined by a wireless network)
- A scanner/printer/fax gadget
- A dedicated scanner
- A hand-cranked emergency flashlight
- A portable GPS unit
- A 2 GB microdrive (I wonder where the other one is?)
- Umpteen flash drives
- Five microphones
- Two flash memory card readers
- A digital web cam )
Here's my concern: Birds "sing" as a way of communicating information about territory, sex, and safety. If I record songs at one time and under one set of circumstances, and then play them back under a different set of circumstances, I might just be introducing confusion into the creatures' world. Worse yet, I could be playing the "All's clear!" song while a hawk stands at the ready.
So here's the deal... Obviously, there are ornithologists and bird bloggers out there who know far more than I do about using audio technology to attract birds. I appeal to you folks to contact us (the readership of this blog, me, and eBirdseed.com) and give us the skinny concerning the ethics and proper usage of this technology.
Standing with cables in hand... Just waiting to wire the feeders for sound...
CapeCodAlan
P.S. Oh yeah, you folks might like to see a photo or two... How about these?
Comments
There's another issue to take into consideration. I'm no scientist, but could it also be that bird's hearing is different than us? Could it be that what WE hear in those bird calls doesn't include some tones above or below our threshold of hearing? If so, have we created bird-calls that omit a very important segment of the actual "message" being sent?
If so, what the actual bird call might be saying is: "There's seed available over at CapeCodAlan's back yard. But when man's artificial birdvoice generator gets done trying to duplicate it, there might be enough missing pieces so the message comes out totally distorted, like "Justin Timberlake actually has talent!"
I know that sounds absurd. I mean even birds know better than that, but you get the point.
(Note from CapeCodAlan:
Gerry raises a good point... Humans typically hear in the 20Hz to 20,000Hz range, and our audio equipment/software reflects that. Birds typically "sing" in the 2,000Hz to 4,000Hz range, which means that a decent audio system could easily and very accurately reproduce most bird songs. )
Posted by: Gerry Ashley | May 16, 2007 1:47 AM