Birdsong

Now for something different. Every few years I post an essay about, or alluding to, the tallgrass prairie restoration I've been conducting for the past twenty or so years. For example, this and this.

Not sure why, but I've had an itch to share this recording I made of an Eastern Meadowlark one fine day in May of 2019. The bird selected a perch on a 5-foot tall rebar stake I'd driven into the ground to mark a patch of weeds, and proceeded to serenade me as I worked in the field. Serenade me? More likely he (yes, he) was singing for his sweetheart, or perhaps marking his territory and warning potential competitors to keep their distance. Whatever the motivation, the song was so clear and lovely that I pulled out the recorder that always hangs from my belt. Here's what I got:

 

The recording runs for more than 8 minutes. If possible, play it on a loop on a good sound system in your living room at moderately high volume, or maybe listen with good headphones. The effect through my stereo speakers is magical and enveloping, filling the room. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the prairie, surrounded by nature, free from the commotion and hassles of civilization. A civilization which, if you ask me, is highly overrated, especially of late.

Feel free to download the recording and use it however you wish. To do so, click on the down-arrow (v) at the end of the file name, above the player, above. Select "Download". You can also get it here. For the curious, I'll provide some details about the making of the recording, and playing it, below.

Eastern Meadowlarks are a declining species. Their population has shrunk by 75 percent since 1966. The current population could decline by half over the next two decades. There were no Meadowlarks on my place this year.

Sadly, that's how it is with many bird species, which as a group have been in broad decline for many decades. Sedge Wrens, which were active on my place last month, have declined by more than half since 1993. I've not seen any Red Headed Woodpeckers, another species of concern, since a massive old elm snag burned down many years ago.

And not just birds. The Broad Headed Skink, which I see frequently under the trees at the edge of the prairie, is listed as threatened in Kansas. Admittedly, eastern Kansas is at the far western edge of its range. The Ornate Box Turtle is considered to be near threatened across much of its range. The Monarch Butterfly, a migratory species, could soon be flirting with extinction.

Habitat loss plays prominently in the decline of all these species, which is why restoring and protecting ecosystems such as tallgrass prairie is so important. Monarchs require Milkweed plants on which to lay their eggs and feed their larvae; Milkweeds have been ravished by modern agriculture. I have 9 species of Milkweed in my restoration. Adult Monarchs require flower nectar, such as from colonies of Willowleaf Aster, to fuel their southward migration in the fall.

What follows now is a digression into recording and playback. If this isn't your thing, feel free to bail out.

The recording was made with an Olympus VN-7222PC digital voice recorder, which I used for dictating field notes. The audio quality is amazing. My recorder, which had its aggravations, eventually broke, and I replaced it with a newer Olympus model that I cannot recommend. The newer one has too many useless features (ah, progress) that just get in the way, plus an intolerably long startup time when you turn it on and wait wait wait for the danged thing to boot up. The old one would sometimes turn on rapidly, but other times would take forever, apparently performing some kind of interminable scan of the storage while you wait to use it. Awful design. Not what you want in a digital voice recorder. But as I said, the audio quality was very good for a device intended mostly for dictation.

The present recording was made in the field by just holding the recorder at arm's length in the direction of the bird, and trying to be still and not add any extraneous noise myself. I cleaned it up a bit with Audacity, which is free open source audio editing software. This mostly involved removing a good bit of wind noise on the microphone. I'm happy with the result given my lack of expertise with audio editing. The recording could benefit from even more cleanup.

Playback options depend on your own setup. If you have a modern stereo receiver with a USB port, then you can download the recording to a USB flash drive and play from that. My receiver is very, very old. I originally burned the recording to a CD and played it on a CD drive attached to my stereo system. That approach—especially the burning—is increasingly not an option. Most computers don't have a CD burner any more, although you can certainly purchase a USB-attached CD drive.

Which leads me to mentioning the best purchase I've made in many, many years: The NAD DAC 2.  This device sends very high quality digital audio over WiFi from your computer to your stereo system. It consists of two modules that communicate directly with each other wirelessly: A small device (the NAD DAC 2 transmitter) that plugs into a USB port on your computer, and a companion device (the NAD DAC 2 receiver) that connects to your stereo system with RCA cables, exactly like all the other components (CD and tape players, for example) that have been attached to stereo systems over the past 60 years.

Installation and use could not be easier. There are no detailed instructions you need to read, no configuration to perform. Just connect the NAD DAC 2 receiver device to your stereo system with the provided RCA cables, and leave it connected just like you would any other stereo component. Connect to an unused pair of RCA inputs on your stereo. For example, if you don't have an attached CD player, use the CD inputs. Or use the tape inputs. It doesn't matter, except don't use phono or turntable inputs because their electrical characteristics are different from all the others. Power the NAD DAC 2 receiver from a wall outlet, or from a switched outlet on your stereo system, which is what I do. That causes it to turn on when the stereo is turned on, and off otherwise.

Whenever you want to play audio from your computer through your stereo, select the input on your stereo system to which you attached the NAD DAC 2 receiver. Then plug the NAD DAC 2 transmitter into a USB port on your computer. While it's plugged in, any audio that would normally play on your computer is sent wirelessly to your stereo system instead. It's all automatic. And it's a direct wireless connection that doesn't require or use a WiFi router.

The NAD DAC 2 handles very high quality digital audio of all types. If perchance you have audio files that exceed CD quality (not a lot of people do), that quality is preserved over the wireless connection. I have ripped my entire CD collection to WAV files that preserve the original CD digital encoding and hence quality. You can rip to MP3 files also, and you should probably do both kinds if you're going to go to the trouble of ripping. (My car's sound system only plays MP3s.) Now I can play all my music from my Windows laptop, without ever touching a CD. Nice.

For playing audio files, you can use the trusty old Windows Media Player, or free products like foobar2000 for playing albums. I don't like the newer audio players because they try to do all kinds of things that just get in the way, such as downloading and displaying album art and such. I don't need or want that. With foobar2000, if you want to play an album, just browse to the folder in which the album's audio files live, import that folder, and play it. Easy.

The NAD DAC 2 can be used to play any audio you'd normally play on your computer, but through your stereo system instead. Stuff like streaming music, podcasts, and the Meadowlark song streamed through the player above, or downloaded to your computer. And of course, your NPR news programming. Just turn on your stereo, plug in the transmitter, and play your stuff the way you normally would.

One final thing, since this essay is about birdsong. Here's a great web resource from Cornell University (the world leader in all things birds) that allows you to upload audio of bird songs and calls in order to determine what species of bird you recorded. It works great. I use it a lot for bird identification.

 Copyright (C) 2022 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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