Their media player with the spectrogram is wonderful and does so much to enhance the appreciation of each birdsong. As a lifelong synthesizer programmer and composer I appreciate the ability to visualize each song.
They even offer a quick-start guide for recording birdsong as well as a paid course to learn in greater depth. My kind of people!
Birds are endlessly fascinating and I'm delighted to see such a well presented ode to their beauty.
I have nuthatches that peck and bore large holes in my cedar siding in the spring to nest. They showed up about two weeks ago and they’ll be here through summer.
The sound is obnoxious and they’ve basically destroyed my house. I’ve tried everything to keep them away but they are tenacious. We’re currently saving up to reside the house with Hardie Board; I think that’s the only solution.
Couple of years ago, they were doing this to me every... single... day... at 4am. Nothing really scares them off. I would go outside and try to wave them off. They go just far enough to get out of your reach, or just hide on the back side of a tree trunk. Then they do that stupid Woody Woodpecker laugh, and fly right back when you go inside. I now see where Woody Woodpecker got his personality from. What a dick.
Not listed is the red-bellied woodpecker. I've got one of them that drums on my gutters just outside my home office window every day. Multiple times a day. Fast, evenly spaced drumming with no variation or fall-off. Lasts 1-3 seconds. Maybe not quite as fast as the flicker, but close.
I thought he was putting holes in my house for a while until I figured out what he was doing. I have a lot of flickers around too, but don't hear them drumming very often.
Yeah, we got these red-bellied wodpeckers here, knocking on the metal top of the poles of the electricity lines. Since the main inlet is connect to a wall in our bed room, they wake us up early in the morning by their drumming, resonationg through the electricity lines from near and far.
It have spent hours, half aslep, pondering what that sound could be, it took quite a while before I found the origin!
I loved hearing then in Hampstead Woods in North London, and also the trees along the New River (artificial canal intended to bring fresh water into the city, built in Tudor times) - but it was quite difficult to see the little buggers. I did have a spotted one come to our bird table in Lincoln UK a some years ago, and my little brother who lives near Grantham quite often sees them.
This reminds me of how it's possible to decode prairie dog communication into literal 'words' that specify location of possible threats (lookup 'Slobodchikoff prarie dogs'). It's remarkable. Only made possible by the curious–albeit eccentric–human sitting in nature and listening in true analog.
And, on the topic of tapping, I imagine even the cadence of our keystrokes can be used to construct meaningful browser fingerprints. We are always emitting so many artefacts that can be used to construct rich identities. It's a bit terrifying from a surveillence perspective but also very satisfying to create order from noise.
I'll have to dig it up (maybe if I get time tomorrow I'll try), but I've seen a couple research papers where they wrote software that got was pretty effective at decoding peoples passwords by listening to them type. Between different keys sounding slightly different, the timing between keystrokes, and an individual's personal typing patterns, it's not even all that difficult. So yes, that sort of thing has definitely been done.
Cornell also made Merlin, a similar app that works offline, which is handy when you're out in the wild trying to find birds. (BirdNET still relies on serverside processing I think)
I actually enjoyed the article and the variety of drum beats, and the spectrograms, even though we have completely different woodpeckers here in Finland.
This is a somewhat ridiculous comment. The article says many things about what one should pay attention to in order to identify what species of woodpecker you're hearing, and I'm sure you could easily get a list of species that live near you with descriptions of their drumming.
Sample quote:
> It’s especially important to pay attention to speed and duration of the drumming
Imagine if someone described the different leaf characteristics (shapes, arrangement, edges, etc) and used local-to-them trees as illustrations. Is that useless to me? Or can I perhaps find an analog from the trees native to my city?
Is there a guide how to spot them? I live near a massive forest and I always hear them but never managed to actually see one. The sound is just coming from all over the place.
It might sound silly, but just close your eyes and listen. Your brain is very good at localizing sounds. Turn to see if the sound direction moves or becomes more distinguishable. Tilting your head or moving a few steps in any direction can help in some environments.
You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice. You might not be able to actually find the bird once you've found the tree. They can be hard to spot from the ground.
[+] [-] Slow_Hand|11 months ago|reply
Their media player with the spectrogram is wonderful and does so much to enhance the appreciation of each birdsong. As a lifelong synthesizer programmer and composer I appreciate the ability to visualize each song.
They even offer a quick-start guide for recording birdsong as well as a paid course to learn in greater depth. My kind of people!
Birds are endlessly fascinating and I'm delighted to see such a well presented ode to their beauty.
[+] [-] quercusa|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] caseyohara|11 months ago|reply
The sound is obnoxious and they’ve basically destroyed my house. I’ve tried everything to keep them away but they are tenacious. We’re currently saving up to reside the house with Hardie Board; I think that’s the only solution.
[+] [-] olyjohn|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0203|11 months ago|reply
I thought he was putting holes in my house for a while until I figured out what he was doing. I have a lot of flickers around too, but don't hear them drumming very often.
[+] [-] rsolva|11 months ago|reply
It have spent hours, half aslep, pondering what that sound could be, it took quite a while before I found the origin!
[+] [-] silisili|11 months ago|reply
I used to joke that they'll let you know when they're out of suet, by hammering your gutters to wake you up at 6am.
[+] [-] zabzonk|11 months ago|reply
Lovely birds.
[+] [-] padolsey|11 months ago|reply
And, on the topic of tapping, I imagine even the cadence of our keystrokes can be used to construct meaningful browser fingerprints. We are always emitting so many artefacts that can be used to construct rich identities. It's a bit terrifying from a surveillence perspective but also very satisfying to create order from noise.
[+] [-] 0x0203|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|11 months ago|reply
I’m in radiology and knowing what the MR scanner is doing from a few rooms away is something many of us can do.
‘The TR is wrong’
Presumably common in other fields with noisy machines.
[+] [-] p1mrx|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mrgoldenbrown|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tiahura|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] CommieBobDole|11 months ago|reply
He's drumming on the metal chimney cap because it's the loudest thing he can find.
[+] [-] sohkamyung|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tsurba|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wrsh07|11 months ago|reply
Sample quote:
> It’s especially important to pay attention to speed and duration of the drumming
Imagine if someone described the different leaf characteristics (shapes, arrangement, edges, etc) and used local-to-them trees as illustrations. Is that useless to me? Or can I perhaps find an analog from the trees native to my city?
[+] [-] haunter|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] AlotOfReading|11 months ago|reply
You'll develop an ear for it the more you practice. You might not be able to actually find the bird once you've found the tree. They can be hard to spot from the ground.