Date: 4/14/25 11:47 pm From: Lance Benner via groups.io <lbenner...> Subject: [LACoBirds] Let's Record Bird Sounds!
Hi Everyone, Following up on the recent webinar on recording bird sounds presented for Los Angeles Birders (available online at: https://www.labirders.org/webinars/sound_recordings_mar2025.html) we would like to encourage birders in our area to obtain more bird recordings and to upload them to eBird. Birders in Los Angeles County excel at submitting eBird checklists and uploading photos to eBird, but far fewer recordings have been contributed. For example, currently more than 771,000 photos from Los Angeles County have been entered into eBird, but only about 18,300 audio recordings have been uploaded. In other words, 42 times as many photos have been uploaded relative to sound recordings. In Orange county, the contrast is even more stark: 684,000 photos have been uploaded versus only 7400 audio recordings. Recordings can be really important (arguably even more so than photos in many situations) but most audio files uploaded to eBird in this area are provided by only a small number of people. Everyone can make valuable contributions if you have a smartphone; fancy and complicated recording equipment, although very helpful, is not necessary. Recordings are easier than ever to obtain with the widespread use of free smartphone sound recording apps such as Merlin, Voice Record Pro, SongMeter Touch, Voice Memo, and others. Each recording is analoglous to a museum specimen and can be useful in ways that aren't always immediately obvious. Recordings document bird songs at a particular time and location and can be increasingly important in the future. Recording is also an excellent way to learn bird sounds and can be useful for research projects (e.g., identifying red crossbill and evening grosbeak flight call types). Recordings of all species in our area are important, even from species that are very common such as mourning doves, California towhees, California scrub-jays, house finches, acorn woodpeckers, common ravens, lesser goldfinches, and Anna's hummingbirds. Species with wide voical repertoires are particularly worthwhile: Bewick's wrens, California thrashers, northern mockingbirds, and oak titmice. One specific topic that needs attention is singing by female birds, which isn't that well understood. It's been widely accepted for many years that female birds don't sing but evidence is growing that females of some species actually sing quite a bit; purple finches and canyon wrens are good examples. We need more recordings! Right now is an excellent time to record birds because many are arriving for the spring and singing vigorously. If you haven't attempted recording bird songs, please give it a try! It's actually straightforward and a lot of fun. Doing so has helped me learn many sounds and gain a deeper appreciation for birds and their behaviors. With most smartphone apps, just start the recording app and then press the button to start recording. Then press the stop button to end the recording. Before uploading the files to eBird, it's a good idea to trim handling noise at the beginning and end and to normalize the files to -3 dB (decibels). Normalizing usually amplifies so that the loudest sound on the recording is at a standard value. This is strongly encouraged for eBird submissions although it's not required. I normally do this by transferring the files to my laptop and then using the free software "Audacity" but many other sound editing apps such as Raven Lite (which is also free) can do this. The talk mentioned above discussed this, but if you have questions, feel free to email me. Also, not all smartphone recording apps have the same sensitivity. Merlin is probably the most widely used phone recording app, and it can do many wonderful things, but its sensitivity is not as good as other apps such as Voice Record Pro and Song Meter Touch. Of course, many people use Merlin to help identify sounds, which the other apps mentioned above don't do. Voice Record Pro and SongMeter Touch give users more control and can record significantly fainter sounds. For example, I regularly hear sounds that do not appear in Merlin recordings, but with Voice Record Pro, I can capture many more of them. In the bigger picture, we'd like to build a library of as many bird sounds in the greater Los Angeles area as possible to document what's here and to establish a baseline for future changes. This is an ideal project for community science, so we'd like to ask for your help. We hope you'll join us! Regards, Lance Lance Benner Pasadena, CA On behalf of Los Angeles Birders _._,_._,_
