Mar
15
2019
Linda Macaulay – Profile
Many AWSRG members will be aware of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithica, upstate New York, and its archive of wildlife recordings; the Macaulay Library. It is one of the few such libraries dedicated to nature sound in the world, others being the British Library’s sound archive and our own CSIRO Wildlife Sound Archive.
The library has been named after Linda Macaulay, a prolific and accomplished recordist, contributor and supporter of the library.
In this engaging interview, Linda discusses her recording techniques and tells of some more memorable encounters (audio and spectrograms included):
Recordist of note—Linda Macaulay
Mar
8
2019
Latest Audiowings journal plus CD
The December 2018 issue of Audiowings has been out a while, and members will have received and devoured it well by now! However for those who haven’t, here’s a summary of what’s in our latest edition.
Nocturnal ecologist Julie-Broken Brow begins with an insightful article on how habitat and foraging ecology are related to ultrasonic microbat vocalisations.
Cetacean ecologist Jennifer Allen takes us under the sea searching for clues on how Humpback Whale songs are transferred so faithfully and quickly across vast distances from one population to another.
Sue Gould paints a broad-brush picture of Huon Bowerbird vocalisations, focusing on the overall pattern of singing behaviour and how that might relate to their social behaviour. She includes links to her online audio recordings.
Tony Baylis contributes a companion article on the birdsong of Papua New Guinea’s Huon Peninsular, focusing on vocalisations of the Emperor Bird of Paradise, with spectrograms. more »
Mar
1
2019
AWSRG 2019 Workshop / Conference Dates
Dates for the Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group’s 2019 conference / workshop are now confirmed. Specific details and logistics for the event are still coming together, but in the meantime, please make a note of dates in your calendars.
8th – 12th July, 2019
UNSW Field Station, Smiths Lake, NSW.
Our gathering will be week of listening to the natural world – sharing the skills and experience of nature sound recording for a variety of purposes, ranging from scientific research, to artistic responses and personal enjoyment.
Our venue will be the UNSW Field Research Station, located on the southwest shore of Smiths Lake, part of the Myall Lakes region on the central NSW coast. It is around 100km north of Newcastle and 35km south of Forster.
This location offers us a huge range of opportunities for wildlife sound recording, encompassing ocean and coastal, saltwater to freshwater lake habitats, and extensive tracts of sandy coastal heath, swamps, sclerophyll woodlands and subtropical rainforests.
One of our keynote presenters will be Dr. Douglas Quin, from Syracuse University in the US. Doug has a vast experience of sound recording around the world, including some extraordinary research in the Antarctic, and his work is accomplished in both sciences and arts. He’s generous with his knowledge, a natural educator, and enthusiastic about being part of our event.
We’re scheduling our conference for July to tie in with Doug’s availability. However we’re hoping it will also make it possible for local researchers, who would often be in the field during spring, to attend and contribute. We’ve found that our usual September timeslot has often precluded these professionals in the past. Given the extremely dry conditions in recent years across the inland and Queensland in particular, the coastal location should give is ample recording subjects, even though it is early in the season.
Details about the speakers program and workshops for the week, accommodation options, costs and booking details (much of it preliminary at this stage), will be available and updated on the conference page here.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Jan
1
2019
HNY 2019!
Wishing all AWSRG members and friends a fulfilling 2019. May the natural world sing for your microphones, or even better, just for you.
This year we will be holding our biennial workshop/conference. The organising committee are still considering venues (although we have one which looks very suitable), and our anticipated dates are the second week of July (a little earlier than usual). This time will hopefully allow researchers who would normally be in the field during spring to attend, plus allow a pre-eminent visiting recordist from overseas to be our keynote guest.
More details of all this as they are confirmed. But for now, lightly pencil the 8th-12th July in your (digital?) diaries, and we’ll look forward to gathering again.
Nov
28
2018
Freshwater Listening Concert
Recently, several AWSRG members – Leah Barclay, Bob Tomkins, Vicki Hallett, Melinda Barry and myself – joined interested folks from near and far for a weekend of environmental listening and creative sound making in central Victoria.
The event was titled ‘Freshwater Listening’, an initiative of acclaimed sound artist (and also AWSRG member) Ros Bandt. The venue was Australia’s first – only? – ‘Acoustic Sanctuary’; as Ros has designated her property near the small village of Fryerstown, near Castlemaine.
Oct
19
2018
Audiowings – out now!
Thanks to our amazing journal editors – Sue Gould, text and Tony Baylis, audio (with John Campbell proof reading) – the latest edition of Audiowings (plus accompanying CD) is now available.
If you’re a paid up AWSRG member, you will have received it recently. Its arrival in the post may also be a prompt for a few members to renew their membership! If you’d like to receive the journal, simply get in touch with us (via contact form) and become a member.
So, what’s in this edition? A personal reflection and summary of our 2017 Baradine workshop from Bob Tomkins, articles on environmental music practices by Vicki Hallet and Nicole Carroll, Sue Gould discusses song variation in Cicadabirds, Michael Mahony details his research on the intriguing vocalising of the Green-thighed Frog, pioneering field recordist Les Gilbert converses with John Campbell, and I recall my recent experience in New Guinea’s cloudforest.
Then there’s the CD, featuring humpback whales, flamingos, froglets, curious crows and acquatic soundscapes. And a diversity of vocalisations from our cover bird, New Guinea’s White-winged Robin.
And finally, a reminder that past editions of Audiowings are digitally archived and available to members on this site.
Aug
21
2018
Your journal needs you!
AudioWings is the member’s journal of the Australian Wildlife Sound Recording Group. With it, we aim to improve the skill base of members with respect to sound recording techniques, sound analysis and archiving of your sounds. We also aim to facilitate information sharing among the community of sound recordists.
The AudioWings editorial team has been working on improving the quality of the journal. With this in mind we have updated the Style Guidelines, both to improve the look of the journal, and to make the guidelines simple for contributors to follow.
We welcome ANY contributions relating to sound recording including: observations and analysis of sound recordings, book reviews, equipment reviews, trip reports, profiles of sound recordists and any novel techniques you may have developed.
Southern Royal Albatross pleading for copy (Photo: Sue Gould)
Jun
19
2018
BBC Radio 4 explores birdsong
The curious cases of Rutherford and Fry is a BBC Radio program in which two scientists explore topics nominated by listeners. This fun program was initiated by a question from a listener in Cambridgeshire who asked “Winter is finally over and the birds are all singing their hearts out at dawn. What’s all the noise about? And why are some songs so elaborate?” The program covers a range of topics about birdsong. It includes a short interview with renowned birdsong researcher Don Kroodsma.
May
11
2018
The Dance of a Newly Discovered Bird-of-Paradise
Differences in vocalisations are increasingly being investigated as to whether they indicate hitherto unrecognised new species. In this case, the visual display is just as significant. And amazing.
I can imagine how many hours went into locating and filming these birds to capture the high-resolution images and audio on this video. That it is such an iconic bird makes me wonder how many other discoveries await patient naturalists and sound recordists.
Click here for the full research paper. Thanks to Tony Baylis for alerting us to this new research.
Apr
27
2018
Here’s the buzz on recording bees!
by Vicki Powys
I knew about buzz pollination from watching David Attenborough’s Life of Insects on TV a few years ago. Some bees could buzz at a certain pitch to release pollen from certain flowers. “Middle C…”, said David Attenborough, “…the pitch has to be Middle C”. I was intrigued as I’d never heard about this before.
Then one spring morning in 2016, on my woodland property in Capertee Valley, New South Wales, yellow guinea flowers began to bloom and I could hear the conspicuous flight hum of a very large and shiny black bee. It buzzed loudly as it settled on each flower, before zooming off to the next one. This was a female Australian carpenter bee Xylocopa aeratus, and I was keen to get a photo and to record its buzz.
Female carpenter bee Xylocopa aeratus buzzing a guinea flower Hibbertia obtusifolia, Capertee Valley NSW, 8 November 2016.
I waited amidst the low-growing guinea flower shrubs, seated on a folding stool, camera and recorder at the ready. It became a daily ritual – at dawn each day I’d go off to watch bees buzzing. As well as the big, black carpenter bees there were also smaller native bees, all buzzing the guinea flowers and collecting pollen. I took photos and made videos with my Lumix pocket camera, and recorded the buzzing sounds on my Olympus LS10, using its built-in mics or a Sennheiser ME66 gun microphone.
My bee recording kit – folding stool, Lumix DCM-TZ60 camera, Olympus LS10 audio recorder and Sennheiser ME66 supercardoid microphone in pistol grip.
Of course I was keen to know if all my bees buzzed at Middle C, so I analyzed the recordings to find the fundamental pitch of the pollination buzz for each bee species. For this I downloaded free Praat software, and learned how to use it from a YouTube video.
My findings were exciting! These Capertee Valley bees buzzed at a wide range of frequencies – up to one octave either side of Middle C! The pitch of the buzz did not relate to the size of the bee, nor to the size of the flower.
Audio: Female carpenter bee, Xylocopa aeratus. The higher-pitched pollination buzz alternates with the flight hum.
30 October 2016, 7.19 am EST, ME66 gun mic to Olympus LS10.