Equipment and Techniques

My goal over the last few years has been to obtain as many of the commonly heard calls in my local birding region as possible. This was done with easily portable recording gear. The equipment I use most is an Edirol R09-HR recorder (which replaced the Sony MZ-RH10 minidisc recorder I used before) and a Sennheiser ME66 shotgun microphone. I edit my recordings with Adobe Audition (now called Cool Edit) to reduce low frequency background noise. For nocturnal recording, I use a Telinga parabolic dish with ME62 microphone and a Sound Devices 702. Sounds using a parabola are amplified, especially the higher frequencies, and often pick up sounds inaudible to the unaided ear.
The sonagrams are obtained using Raven software, free from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and I've tried to keep the time and frequency scales of comparable calls constant in any one post, unless noted. Some of the phonetic descriptions of sounds are my own, some are those used in field guides or on commercial recordings. Recordings are of perched birds, unless noted, and of spontaneously calling birds (ie no pishing). No playback to encourage calling or singing has been used except for a few owl or rail recordings, and if so this is noted.

All recordings copyright Paul Driver.




Nightingale recorded May 1979 in Hertfordshire, England with a Phillips cassette recorder.