Tag: birding

Delights, Experiments, Listening

Echolocation

I can’t recall where I first intersected with Alex Tomlinson’s work, but I’m utterly enchanted with Hear to There, a website of his that uses community-sourced sound bites to plot paths around the globe in sound. The recordings are generally ambient, rather than the narrated Rambles I record with vague regularity, but they evoke such a sense of place it still feels like you’re in dialogue with a character.

There are so many exquisite tiny projects like this that enjoy fireworks of activity when they launch and then end up drifting through the web in quieter ways. (I’m thinking of Meatspace, among others.) Part of me feels sad that the hype machine burns out so quickly, other parts are happy that these small-scale experiments go to ground—just waiting for the next unwary traveler to stumble into their midst.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Alex is also a designer of bird-themed items. His illustration stuff is absolutely gorgeous, and I was lucky enough to receive one of his Vexillowlogy patches in the mail this year. He’s got a shop, if you’re a bird nerd like me and flush with Christmas cash.)

Delights

Owl News

Usually we get Great Horned Owls in our garden, slow and mournful and resonant, but last night I heard a newcomer with a call like a rubber ball dropped down a flight of stairs.

Listen:

It’s a Western Screech Owl!

This audio recording is from April 4th, 2020. It was captured 130 miles from here in the San Gabriel Mountains by Lance A. M. Benner, a Principal Scientist at NASA JPL, and uploaded to the miracle that is Xeno-canto. If you haven’t come across that site name before…well. It’s a community-driven database of bird calls from around the globe, but that description doesn’t really capture its magnificence. The site’s been around since 2005, and the breadth and quality of the recording collection is staggering. You can look for absolutely anything there, and a great deal of it is licensed under Creative Commons.

Benner has contributed 1,926 recordings to the site.

Isn’t it wild that people just do stuff like this?

The most famous Western Screech Owl in my internet circles right now is probably Coconut the Owl, who took up residence in Austin Kleon’s backyard earlier in the Pandemic and recently received a new abode:

A photograph of a small owl fluffed up and looking very satisfied in an owl box, a tall wooden crate nailed to a tree. There's a fringe of icicles on the box's roof, and the branches are bare. The owl is barred grey and white. Its eyes are closed.
Coconut in situ.

Also apropos of nothing I followed some links about Benner out of idle curiosity and found myself listening to a few of his owl-specific recordings on Owl Pages Dot Com, a site devoted to…well, you know.

A screenshot from Owl Pages Dot Com showing eight sections titled Owls of the World, Owl Physiology, Owl Gallery, Owl FAQs, Owl Articles, Owl Sounds, Owl Artwork, and About the Owl Pages.

This concludes the evening dispatch of Owl News.