This is a test of using the MediaElement js plugin to play mp3 audio files without Flash. Will this play on the iPad? Yes, it does!

Here is where recording information can be included and styled so that the text is small and colored.

Hey, this works quite nicely! Now I wonder if this player is accessible to vision impaired users (unfortunately, a quick test using the FANGS plugin for Firefox indicates that the player will be completely invisible to screen readers such as JAWS).

This is a test to see if an embedded youtube video will play on the iPad, which indeed it does:

One thing is now evident: my central focus this year will be on collecting immersive audio recordings for the soundscape series I intend to launch next winter. I am most enthusiastic about spending over a month in the western mountains, starting later in May and extending into July. I will be visiting many new areas and encountering new assortments of nature sounds everywhere I go. Now what could be more exciting than that?

But before heading West I would like to do a quick review of what has happened so far. During our early season trip to the Smoky Mountains and several other more southerly locations, Ted Mack and I were dogged by bad weather. Wind and rain made it very difficult to get much, though we managed to snag a few nice recordings before returning home on April 22. In early May, Bob McGuire and I traveled northward to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario in quest of choruses of Common Loons. Once again we encountered bad weather (very high winds), but nonetheless we captured some absolutely beautiful loon recordings, along with a really delightful marsh dawn chorus. Here are highlights from both trips, starting with recent recordings and working back:

Dawn in a marsh recorded on May 5 in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario:

Loon Magic recorded on May 4 after dark in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario:

Dawn chorus recorded on May 1 at Texas Hollow State Forest near Ithaca, New York:

Birds singing at dusk along Elliott Island Road on the eastern shore of Maryland. Recorded April 19:

Busy Dawn Chorus recorded on April 18 in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina:

Coyotes and a Gurgling Brook recorded on April 14 at Cade’s Cove in the Smoky Mountain National Park:

Whip-poor-wills and Mountain Chorus Frogs recorded on April 12 in Big South Fork National Recreation Area, northeastern Tennessee:

Bonus Track – Lang playing his japanese shakuhachi flute with spring peepers singing nearby (forgive me, I’m a beginner!):

Sometimes even the expert (me!) gets confused, about things that I am supposedly quite familiar with. Such was the case in the summer of 2007 during a visit with friends in the the hills south of Corvallis, Oregon.

I got up early one morning and went in search of an immature Cooper’s Hawk which one of my friends had heard the day before near the top of a hill. As I approached the spot, my attention was drawn to a vireo of some sort (or so I thought), singing phrase after phrase from the top of a fir tree. Not being that familiar with western vireos, I was not sure which species I was listening to. Within seconds, I heard a Cooper’s Hawk give several whining screams from nearby. My mind, which was a bit groggy from lack of sleep, started putting things together, but failed to grasp the full import of the situation.

A little voice inside told me that the “singing” was a response to the presence of the hawk. But what the voice failed to inform me was that I wasn’t hearing a vireo at all … I was actually hearing the “vireo song” of a Purple Finch (which I was already familiar with and which I firmly believe is given in response to aerial predators, based on observations of finches back home in New York). My mistake is evident when you hear me comment on the recording, but notice that I caught my error before I finished talking:

Purple Finch responding with 'vireo-song' in the presence of a Cooper's Hawk. 7:30am, 8 July 2007, near Corvallis, Oregon. Recorded by Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

The “vireo song” of the Purple Finch is fairly well-known. It was described by Aretas A. Saunders about 75 years ago. But Aretas and virtually everyone who has followed never made the connection to aerial predators (at least I don’t think anybody has). Then I come along and observe three cases (I believe) of vireo song being given by Purple Finches in the presence of hawks. A sample size of three is not much, but the mere fact that a Purple Finch would do such a thing when a hawk is nearby convinces me that my claim is accurate.

Are any of you familiar with the vireo song of the Purple Finch? Do any of you take exception to my conclusion about its function? Has anyone ever heard them do this in the presence of an aerial predator? Am I crazy for thinking it is an aerial predator alarm response? Whatya think? Am I nuts, or have I discovered something neat?