All Posts and Articles tagged with earbirding

In a previous post on recording birds with a camera or mobile phone, I described how you can make quite decent recordings just using your camera or mobile phone. In this post I will discuss how I decided on buying a Sony PCM A10 recorder. You can read more about the technical details of digital recording in my longer article The Basics of Sound Recording for Birders. Going into the equipment jungle of sound birding is a challenge!

---

This is a simple overview of the basics of sound, human hearing and the workings of digital audio recording, with particular focus on the recording of bird songs and calls. There will be almost no mathematics, but enough of the important concepts, so you will know a little bit about what to consider when buying a recorder and also so you will understand the important recording parameters that you can control and how to set them.

---

As part of my decision to start recording birds this year, I also decided to try start recording migrating birds over my apartment in central Stockholm. Yeah, I know I should have better things to do, but this is fun. Bear with me! This summer I bought a small Sony PCM A10 recorder, which I think is an excellent lightweight recorder, to have with me in the field. In mid July I started to leave it outside my window over the night, recording for the entire night.

---

This year I decided to start recording birds more seriously. My decision was driven by a desire to learn more about bird songs and calls, but also to see what I could do digitally with sound recordings. I have, for a long time, been intrigued by Fourier transforms and spectrograms and how they could be used for machine learning and identification of bird songs and calls. Yes, we all have strange interests deep down in our souls.

---