FreeLists / birdky / [birdky] Cornell Birding Link

["Preston Forsythe" <pns_for@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is an interesting link. A texas biologist posted this on a caving site 
this morning. Check out the Dance of the Hip Hop Bird!

By the way our evening owl ventures have turned into evening 3 to 5 mile walks 
through the owl country at Sinclair. The owls are now very vocal in the late 
afternoon. One flushed out of the weeds 15 ft. away.

Preston
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Library of Bird and Animal Sounds Available Online





Newswise - For decades, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has shared the 
remarkable sounds of birds and other animals with the public through audio 
guides featuring recordings hand-picked from the Macaulay Library of Natural 
Sounds' vast collection. Now anyone can explore the archive's holdings on 
his or her own. For the first time, more than 65,000 sound clips and some 
18,000 video clips of birds and other animals are accessible for no charge 
at the Macaulay Library's Web site, http://www.animalbehaviorarchive.org.

"We've long dreamed of swinging the doors to the archive open. Technology 
and dedicated work by our staff are, at last, making this a realization," 
said Greg Budney, acting director of the Macaulay Library. "That's important 
to our core mission in education and scientific research."

Although the online material currently has a North American emphasis, it 
includes a generous sampling from around the world. Visitors to the Web site 
can listen to the "Best of Collection," such as a western diamondback 
rattlesnake responding to a potential threat or a satin bowerbird courting 
mates. They can also search the collection for any animal, whether it is a 
backyard bird, a killer whale from Antarctica or an insect from Malaysia. 
Video footage is available for some species.

Visitors also can listen to birds while watching a real-time spectrogram and 
waveform scroll across the screen. The Macaulay Library's IT team developed 
this interactive visualization tool, called Raven Viewer. It is the first 
and only player that allows real-time visualization of sounds on the 
Internet. The player recently won second place in Science magazine's 
"Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge," which recognizes 
outstanding achievement in using visual media to promote understanding of 
scientific phenomena.

The Macaulay Library will continue to make more recordings available online.

SIDEBAR:

Digitizing the dance of a hip hop bird: Video revolutionizes study of 
little-known birds

When it comes time to win mates, a strange bird -- Carola's Parotia 
bird-of-paradise -- from New Guinea performs a tough act to follow. After 
clearing a stage on the forest floor and laying down a mat of fungi, the 
male might do a hop and shake, head-shake walk or ballerina dance, in which 
he flares out his feathers dramatically, resembling a tutu. These are just a 
few of the dances he performs to impress a female, along with rhythmic 
vocalizations, wing rattling and such enhancements as iridescent plumage and 
wire-like feathers protruding from his head. This courtship display is one 
of the most complex in the animal kingdom and, until now, has rarely been 
witnessed.

Biologist Edwin Scholes, a visiting fellow at the Cornell's Museum of 
Vertebrates at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, describes these displays for 
the first time in the October issue of the scientific journal The Auk. He 
captured video footage that is now available online through Macaulay 
Library, a multimedia "museum" of animal behavior.

The footage is the first instance of a museum archiving "behavioral 
specimens" and making them available online in association with a published 
study.

"In the past, researchers described the behavior of animals in publications, 
but in no case did others have ready access to actually see them," said Greg 
Budney, acting director of the Macaulay Library.

To see the dance, go to http://www.allaboutbirds.org/paradise.