Free Software for Exploring Sounds

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, renowned for its production of audio guides to help people learn the songs of birds, has released a free tool that enhances learning in another way—by enabling people to visualize the sounds as spectrograms.

Originally developed as RavenPro software for scientists, Raven Lite is a free, simplified version that enables bird watchers, educators, and students to see and listen to sounds on a home or classroom computer.

Spectrograms are visual aids that people use to distinguish among different kinds of sounds. For example, listening to a sound and seeing the spectrogram can help people learn to recognize differences in cadence and quality of songs, such as American Robins versus Red-eyed Vireos, or Downy versus Hairy woodpeckers.

Matthew Anthes-Washburn, a high-school teacher at the Parkway Academy of Technology and Health in Boston, said his students use Raven Lite in physics classes to study the characteristics of bird song. "Students get a much richer understanding of wave properties like amplitude and frequency when they can see and hear it in a 3-D graph," he says. Raven Lite can play common audio file formats or CD tracks on recent versions of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X from Apple Computer. To learn more or to download the free software, please visit the web site www.RavenSoundSoftware.com.

Sound Items

These products include the sounds of birds or other wildlife from the Lab's Macaulay Library. Your purchase helps support the Lab's mission in research, education, and conservation.

Bird Songs—a book with bird illustrations and a digital audio player featuring sounds of 250 species. $45

Croaking Crooner—motion-activated frog croaks and puffs out its throat. $19.99

Bird Songs in Cuba—songs, calls and other sounds of birds from Cuba. Many other regional audio guides available as well. $29.95

National Geographic Handheld Birds—interactive field guide with images and sounds of 867 species. $499.95 ($399.95 for Lab members). For PDA unit and software card, visit www.handheldbirds.com; for card only, www.sapsuckerwoods.com.

Wild Birds Unlimited at Sapsucker Woods
(877) 266-4928 www.sapsuckerwoods.com

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu