Don Stap's Birdsong

I read this book in late April and although it made me less, rather than more, confident about birding by ear, I thoroughly enjoyed it. My review ...

Birdsong by Don Stap is perfect for the bright days of spring when the full chorus of birds explodes each morning. Divided into three parts, it provides a broad overview of the current state of bioaccoustics. The author begins by tagging along with noted researcher Don Kroodsma on an expedition to capture the different vocalizations of chickadees on Martha's Vineyard. The complexity of this familiar song provides a deft segue into an overview of bird vocalization and the role songs play in bird life.

The second part of the book recounts the author's experiences at the highly regarded bioaccoustic workshop run by San Francisco State University in the Sierra Nevada. Stap introduces an interesting cast of instructors and students and uses both groups' goals to help the reader understand the importance of and potential for contributing to the current knowledge of bird song. This section also underscores the challenges in getting high quality bird song recordings—something I imagine to be even more difficult than getting a decent bird photograph.

The final section, most interesting of all to me, deals with the conundrum of bird song learning in species that are not true songbirds. Stap paints an intriguing picture of how researchers come to focus on a particular questions, recounting the moment Don Kroodsma first heard the song of the three-wattled bellbird on a CD and then later fatefully encountered it on a trip to Costa Rica. This sets the stage for an in-depth examination of the interplay between different populations, bird ages (known through banding studies) and their songs and a challenge to traditional scientific thinking. Traditional thinking says that true songbirds (including thrushes, warblers and sparrows among others) learn their songs while suboscines (an evolutionary branch of the avian tree that includes flycatchers and bellbirds) are genetically programmed and sing the same song regardless of whether they hear it as a nestling or not. Kroodsma's research includes repeated forays to record bellbirds in the tropics and Chris Sharpe (a frequent contributor to this thread) gets a nod for his recordings of bellbirds in the late 1990s. The end result, although unsatisfying for the reader, tells volumes about the scientific research process. Highly recommended (4.5 stars)

Hahaha, yes, people have told me before that there is a mention of those tapes in the book. I happened to be doing some recording in Nicaragua when I heard some songs that were obviously Bellbirds, but really quite different from what I had so often heard in Costa Rica. If the birds were "hard-wired" as Suboscines were supposed to be, one would expect them to sound identical. But these sang markedly different songs. So I made some long, clean recordings and sent them to Don Kroodsma as I knew he was working on this issue. Excited by the discovery, Don invited me to accompany him, Don Stap, Dave Stemple, the husband of Jane Yolen (author of Owl Moon - great children's book about owling!), and others back to the locality to obtain more data. Unfortunately I was busy with my own fieldwork, but I was glad that the recordings were to be so useful. Small world...

Kroodsma's The Singing Life of Birds is a good book to follow on from Birdsong. Also, there are several fascinating NPR interviews with Kroodsma - I think I posted links a year or more back.

Happy listening!

I am about 2/3 of the way through Kroodsma's book. I have also about worn out my old Golden ... the only North American field guide with sonograms. I'm starting, very tentatively, to see the sonograms in my head but since I'm already pretty familiar with my yard birds, what I know keeps getting in the way of what I'm trying to learn.

I was interested to see that Kroodsma has a new book Birdsong by the Seasons. From the reviews, it sounds like it might have been a good bridge between Birdsong and The Singing Life which is just on the edge of having just too much detail.

I love the book Owl Moon and recommend it in some of the teacher guides I have put together for my local nature center. It's not surprising to learn she has more than a passing acquaintance wtih birds. So many children's nature-themed books are either great stories but not very useful for learning about the natural world or dry recitations of natural history facts that don't engage kids. Her book is in that special subset of books that I beleive can spark a lifelong interest in birds.

Too bad you missed out on the expedition, but I imagine that pursuing your own fieldwork is far more interesting that getting a bit longer mention in someone else's research that ironically wasn't even published (at least in the timeframe covered by Birdsong).