While at Kolb Knob in June, I had trouble identifying a couple of birds whose songs dominated the sound space. So I took my iBook out under a tree and recorded them. I don't have separate mic so I used the built-in. I pulled the recording into a sound editor (Sound Studio) and was able to amplify the volume and cut out a good bit of the background hiss. But Sound Studio's graphic analyzer only showed volume (decibels). It did not include a spectrograph displaying pitch (kilohertz). If I could get a spectrograph software for free, I could match these songs with a bird book that shows birds' songs as spectrographs.
Well, last week I found a couple of spectrograph packages, both free. One was a plug-in for the visualizer built into iTunes. It doesn't include the numeric scales (time and kHz) but it does show the markings of a regular spectrograph. And I was able to confirm that one of my recorded songs was indeed the pewee (my previous id was tentative based on a visual sighting that didn't match up 100% and interpretations of the song's descriptions in a couple of books).
The other package is WaveSurfer, produced in Sweden and in English. It's a cross-platform scientific research tool. And it has the kHz and time scales. You can see the results below.
BTW, in my search for a spectrograph package, I ran across an article that was arguing that certain speech patterns (esp. onomatopoeia) are common across languages because they're based on animal sounds like bird songs. Spectrographs are used to spot variations/similarities.
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3 comments:
What an interesting tool!
Richard--No comment about the birds, but on a recent trip to MS, stayed at a house with nice porches. While sitting, listening to the quiet, I noticed bumble bees. They had a destination. Small, round holes in the cedar eaves, spaced about five feet apart. They would simply fly in. No noise, however, to give away their location once inside. I told the maintenance crew. Don't know if they'll pass it on. Potential problem?
Deb
Richard--No comment about the birds, but on a recent trip to MS, stayed at a house with nice porches. While sitting, listening to the quiet, I noticed bumble bees. They had a destination. Small, round holes in the cedar eaves, spaced about five feet apart. They would simply fly in. No noise, however, to give away their location once inside. I told the maintenance crew. Don't know if they'll pass it on. Potential problem?
Deb
Hi Deb,
The bubble bees will create hollow places in the beams and could reduce their strength. And, while most of the time they're not a bother, they could get disturbed by people and sting in defense. They don't attack in swams like honey bees do, but they can sting multiple times/bee. From what I've heard from others, their sting packs a whollup.
My advice is to exterminate them. The safe thing to do is call an exterminator. Or check on the internet for do-it-yourself advice. Because of my exterminator's license and insurance requirements, I cannot offer self-help advice. I can observe that many say simply spraying a pyrethroid (like cypermethrine, permethrine) into the holes will do the job.
--Richard
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