Sounds in Their Suitcases
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Seeing Tim Barksdale and Greg Budney board the airplane in Honolulu, you'd
never guess that their ordinary suitcases held an unprecedented collection
of dazzling bird specimens. Their expedition to Hawaii had yielded the bold
red-and-black Iiwi with its curved pinkish bill, the fiery-orange Akepa, the
tiny chestnut-colored Elepaio, the rare Akiapolaau with its chisel-and-probe
bill, and every other bird species native to the Big Island.
But there were no feathers in the cases Barksdale and Budney were taking back to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Their specimens were entirely digital--clip after clip of sounds and video images of Hawaii's colorful birds flying, foraging, and singing in their natural habitats. Later, anyone opening the figurative drawer to the Lab's new multimedia museum could encounter an Akepa swooping down from the sky and singing in a display for its mate, or a pair of Iiwi chasing one another from tree to tree. Archived and formatted for the Internet, these dynamic recordings will have tremendous potential for scientific study and for bringing sounds and images of Hawaii's birds to tens of thousands of people around the world.
The expedition to Hawaii was part of an ambitious initiative at the Lab's Macaulay Library to acquire sound recordings and video footage of every bird species, starting with North America and Hawaii. Long known for its audio recordings of animals--with 160,000 cuts, the largest such collection in the world--the Macaulay Library is undergoing a transformation into a multimedia museum of animal behavior.
Related articles:
Recording a Sea of Sound: An expedition to capture the sounds and images of Arctic wildlife. BirdScope, Autumn 2005.
Expedition to Cuba:
In Cuba's most biologically diverse region, a team of Cuban and
American biologists discovered new wildlife and found some of the
world's most endangered birds. BirdScope, Winter 2005.
The Last Lek: Lab's latest video puts viewers on the ground with Attwater's prairie-chickens. BirdScope, Autumn 2003.
The Last of Their Kind: Lab's expedition records last Alalas and other Hawaiian birds. BirdScope, Autumn 2002.