<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:#073763">I'm forwarding this useful discussion and links to webinars about recording bird sounds. This is from a California listserv, which is apparently where a lot of crossbills are this year. They are sure thin on the Olympic Peninsula right now. Even our Type 3's may be in California. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:#073763"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:#073763">For a free phone recording app, where you can boost the gain (increase the record volume), I highly recommend Voice Record Pro. The icon is red and black with an old microphone image. It was mentioned in <i>Birding </i>magazine years ago and I've used it ever since. For post-processing, Audacity is free and works great for me. It allows you to set the volume exactly how eBird recommends, and clean up white noise to some extent. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:#073763"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:#073763"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Lance Benner</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:lbenner@charter.net">lbenner@charter.net</a>></span><br>Date: Wed, Feb 7, 2024 at 9:23 PM<br>Subject: Re: [CALBIRDS] Red Crossbill Irruption Update: Feb. 2024<br>To: Timothy Burr <<a href="mailto:tburr@san.rr.com">tburr@san.rr.com</a>>, <<a href="mailto:CALBIRDS@groups.io">CALBIRDS@groups.io</a>>, <<a href="mailto:lacobirds@groups.com">lacobirds@groups.com</a>><br></div><br><br><div>Hi Again Everyone,</div>
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<div>A bit more to add to the discussion:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>First, thank you to Tom, Matt, and Tim for their feedback and suggestions. </div>
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<div>Recording bird sounds, dealing with audio equipment, audio software, and so forth can seem pretty complicated but with some patience you can get pretty good at the key steps pretty quickly. </div>
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<div>I did a two-part presentation on an "Introduction to Recording Bird Sounds" for Los Angeles Birders a while back. Those presentations are available online at:</div>
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<div><a href="https://www.labirders.org/webinars/sound_recordings_pt1.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.labirders.org/webinars/sound_recordings_pt1.html</a></div>
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<div>and </div>
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<div><a href="https://www.labirders.org/webinars/sound_recordings_pt2.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.labirders.org/webinars/sound_recordings_pt2.html</a></div>
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<div>Those talks might help answer some questions. Some of the equipment I described is no longer manufactured (the talks were in 2020), but the techniques and reasons for recording bird sounds are definitely still valid. </div>
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<div>Those talks didn't say much about using audio software though, so here's description of some things that I normally do. This is going to get a bit detailed. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>The software I use most often is Audacity, although I also use Raven Lite occasionally. Both are free. Raven Lite is easier to use but not as capable as Audacity. Audacity is more complicated and not as intuitive. It doesn't look as spiffy either. There are other free apps available but these are the ones I've used. There are also some really good but expensive apps available such as Raven Pro and Adobe Audition.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Once I have a recording, I transfer the file to a laptop (typically by connecting a USB cable from my recorder to my computer), stick the file in a directory with other sound files from the current month and year, and then open it up using Audacity to check it. Audacity is free and very capable but it can be confusing at first. After you load a sound file (or even a video file with sound--Audacity can handle those), you'll see a rather cryptic default display that isn't a sonogram. It's a plot of sound waveform amplitudes. To generate a sonogram, look for a small rectangle on the left that has the name of the file. Click on that, and then scroll down and select "spectrogram." That will generate the audio spectrogram, also known as a sonogram. Then you can see what you've got.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>After listening to the file, if I decide to upload it to an eBird list, then I usually do a couple more steps. First, I trim stuff at the beginning and end that I don't want, such as handling noise, or if there's some loud sound at the end (say, an approaching car or plane). As Matt mentioned, the folks at eBird have some guidelines for recordings, and one of their key recommendations is to normalize the file. Normalizing usually amplifies the sounds unless there were really loud sounds already on the recording. If that's the case, normalizing will reduce the volume somewhat. Again, the goal is to make the maximum volume the same across as many audio files uploaded to eBird as possible. </div>
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<div>Audacity has a settling for normalizing: Effect > Normalize. First, though, you need to select the part of the file you want. For simplicity, let's say it's the whole file. Go to Select > All, which will highlight the whole sonogram, Then go to Effect, scroll down to Normalize, and select "Normalize peak amplitude to" and enter "-3" in the blank box. This will make -3 dB the loudest sound on the file. This is one of the eBird recommendations. Then go to File > Export to output a new version of the file with your modifications. I suggest adopting a new file name to avoid confusion with the original. After that, you're ready to upload it to eBird.</div>
<div>It's a good idea to output the same format that you input. So, if the origina was a wav file, output another wav file. wav files are uncompressed and can be rather large. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Regarding red crossbill recordings obtained with Merlin, unless you're really close, the sounds will often be faint and hard to hear. Getting closer will boost the volume substantially, but that may not be possible in many instances, so amplifying by normalizing will be a big help. </div>
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<div>Audacity (and Raven Lite) can also do straight amplification where you select the amound in dB (Audacity) or the factor to multiply (Raven Lite). If you do that, don't amplify too much or the sound will saturate.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Presumably Raven Lite has a way to normalize too but I didn't find it when I perused the software a short time ago. It can certainly amplify, though.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Getting back to red crossbills, if you're interested in learning a lot more about their flight calls, geographic distributions, biology, and interesting questions that haven't been answered yet, there's a talk on this species available on the Los Angeles Birders website:</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="https://www.labirders.org/webinars/crossbills.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://www.labirders.org/webinars/crossbills.html</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>These talks are free and available to everyone.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Hope this helps, and again, if you find red crossbills anywhere in the world, please record them!</div>
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<div>Regards,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Lance</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Lance Benner</div>
<div>Community Science Chair, Los Angeles Birders</div>
<div>Altadena, CA</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>-------------------- <br><br>From: "Timothy Burr" <<a href="mailto:tburr@san.rr.com" target="_blank">tburr@san.rr.com</a>> <br>To: <<a href="mailto:CALBIRDS@groups.io" target="_blank">CALBIRDS@groups.io</a>> <br>Sent: February 7, 2024, 5:23 PM PST <br>Subject: Re: [CALBIRDS] Red Crossbill Irruption Update: Feb. 2024 <br>I would add to Matt’s final statement RE:Cornell/Macaulay Lib vs. Xeno-canto that the EBIRD audio files are as he states (mostly unedited and therefore of limited utility), BUT there are MANY more files archived in the Macaulay Library that have been provided to Cornell by recordists using professional sound equipment, are of high quality, and are therefore of great utility. Yes, Xeno-canto files are easily downloadable.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Tim Burr</div>
<div>Poway, CA<br>
<div><br>
<blockquote>
<div>On Feb 7, 2024, at 4:02 PM, Matt Brady <<a href="mailto:podoces@gmail.com" target="_blank">podoces@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div>
<div>Hello all. Here is the eBird/Macaulay guide to editing audio recordings: <a href="https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48001064341-audio-preparation-and-upload-guidelines" rel="noopener" target="_blank">https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48001064341-audio-preparation-and-upload-guidelines</a>. The only addition I would make to their guide is to fade in/out at the beginning and ends of your recordings. I find that a majority of audio uploaded to eBird/Macaulay has not been edited at all, and is therefore of limited utility. If you want to get the most out of your recordings, please consider following these guidelines.<br><br>Additionally, <a href="http://xeno-canto.org" target="_blank">xeno-canto.org</a> is another great resource for audio recordings with a few advantages over Macaulay, namely audio files can easily be downloaded and audio files tend to be edited and therefore of higher quality.<br><br>Matt Brady</div>
</blockquote>
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<p></p><p></p></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><font size="4" color="#073763"><span></span>Steve Hampton<span></span></font></div><div>Port Townsend, WA (<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:verdana,arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">qatáy</span>)</div></div><br><div><font color="#073763"><i><br></i></font></div></div></div></div>