Yesterday we suggested a few good books about birding (and got many more from commenters and Facebook fans—thanks!). But you can’t read all the time—so here are a few moments of video to immerse you in the color, sound, behavior, and diversity of birds. These first five are our own multimedia productions (see more at [...]
Our All About Birds website lets you listen to the songs and calls of more than 500 bird species, for free. And starting this week you can even listen to them on mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, iPad, and iPod Touch. The new feature is not an app—you access the songs through your phone’s [...]
The holiday season doesn’t start officially for another nine days or so, but there’s a new book on the horizon that might earn a place on your advance list. It’s the Bird Songs Bible, a hefty tome from Chronicle Books that also features hundreds of recordings from the Cornell Lab—built right in. The book covers [...]
Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland are wrapping up their research at Grand Saline Bai, in Gabon—but Peter has sent us a recording of elephants cavorting in the dark, and Liz has just seen her first daytime elephants in the bai (clearing). Enjoy her photographs, and then close your eyes and listen in on Peter’s recording: [...]
This month we’re taking occasional time-outs to hear about elephant research that Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland, of our Elephant Listening Project, are conducting in Gabon (previous posts here). Peter is a veteran of many trips to Gabon, but this is Liz’s first time seeing forest elephants. Last week, she saw her first four. A [...]
One glossy python and eight automated recorders: those were the highlights we heard about this weekend from Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland. They’re spending the next six weeks recording elephants in Gabon—here’s post #2 from them: Everything is in place: eight autonomous recording units (ARUs) now surround the bai (clearing) at distances ranging from 150 [...]
Not everything we study at the Cornell Lab has feathers. Some have thick wrinkly skin, enormous ears, and an oversized nose they can grab things with. That’s what the scientists in our Elephant Listening Project study. Two of them—Peter Wrege and Liz Rowland—have just headed into the rainforest of Gabon for a stint of recording [...]
Jon Erickson is still roaming Mauritius with his microphone, making recordings of the tropic island’s unusual species. That’s him above, installing a microphone to record sounds at a Mauritius Kestrel nest in January. Here’s his story of the day’s work, including an alarming surprise encounter: I’d spent so much time out among the seabirds of [...]
Over the holidays, recordist Jon Erickson spent a couple of weeks on Round Island, a slanting, sun-baked slab of rock about 14 miles off the north coast of Mauritius. He recorded the island’s multitudes of Herald Petrels and Wedge-tailed Shearwaters, helped the island wardens with chores, and shared his meals with several stout lizards. Here’s [...]
