Sound recording of bird voices has been a passion of mine for several decades now: my publication of MP3 sound collections for various neotropical countries was quite a pioneering breakthrough at that time, and at present some 26.000 of my recordings are available and playable on-line.

When working recently on a project to analyze birdsounds as a support for taxonomic decisions, I was quite satisfied with the wealth of sound recordings that had become available for the neotropics, but equally so I was surprised by the relative lack of sound recordings from Africa (and Asia to a lesser extent). I therefore decided to focus more on those regions, and in recent years I have visited Southern Africa several times with the primary aim to record as many as possible birdsounds. Such documentation of bird vocalizations definitely is important, as can be illustrated by e.g. the case of the Cape Parrot, where my recordings sure had an influence on BirdLife’s decision in 2017 to accept its full species status (and with the potential positive consequences for its protection).

With the availability of a few major sound collections of Southern Africa on one hand, and birdsound databases on internet (Xeno Canto, Macaulay) at the other hand, one may wonder if it is still useful to publish an additional sound collection. There are however still many reasons to do so. The internet sources are databases of unselected and unprocessed data, which may be overwhelming for anyone wanting to quickly pick the most representative recordings for a given species. The commercial sound collections at the other hand, typically hold a single example of the song for any bird species, and thus hardly illustrate the variation in voice.

I therefore hope that this new sound collection made with contemporary digital equipment (and mostly in stereo) is a welcome addition and will help birders and scientists in many ways.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the contributing recordists who made it possible to increase the comprehensiveness of this work. In alphabetic order they are Thijs Fijen, Hans Matheve, Faansie Peacock, Niall Perrins, Lynette Rudman and Derek Solomon.

My life-long birding friends Carl Beel, Luc Bekaert, Geert Claeys, Mark Reygaert and Mark Van Beirs accompanied me in the field on some of my birding trips to the region.

By posting my recordings on www.xeno-canto.org I received some much appreciated help with the identification of several unidentified recordings, in particular from James Bradley.

About the Author

Peter Boesman started birding in his home country Belgium in the 70s when he was twelve. He quickly started travelling all over Europe as a backpacker to learn more about the birds of the old continent. At home he made his knowledge at use by guiding nature walks, writing articles, and taking up responsibilities in the birder’s community. He was e.g. member of the Belgian Rarities Committee and co-author of the Avifauna of Flanders.

Parallel to his studies and interest for nature, Peter also studied music, and obtained the Belgian government medal for piano and a First prize at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent (presently called a Master in Music) before he was even eighteen years old ! Whether this early interest in music developed his abilities for working with bird sounds much later in his life will remain an open question.

In the eighties he started travelling beyond Europe: Africa, Asia, the Middle-East, USA and in 1988, he visited Venezuela, his first neotropical experience.

Only 2 years later, a managerial job opportunity offered by a Belgian multinational company made him move to Venezuela, which allowed him in his free time to get better acquainted with the local avifauna. It was also an opportunity to visit neighboring neotropical countries. Peter made soon several discoveries in Venezuela, and published articles about them (he was involved in the re-discovery of e.g. Grey-headed Warbler, Rustyflanked Crake, Great Antpitta, Plain-flanked Rail and he put some new birding places on the map such as Caño Colorado in E Venezuela, now a standard stop on many birding tours).

It is in this period that he also got interested in recording bird vocalizations. There was hardly anything available about Venezuelan birds and it became quickly obvious that knowing bird songs was essential to study birds in the neotropics. Armed with a directional microphone and a tape recorder he went off in the field. This was the start of the creation of his present birdsound collection. Soon he made many unique recordings, not only in Venezuela, but also in other neotropical countries, e.g. in Colombia in 1994 (a time in which hardly any foreign birder visited this country due to the country-wide guerrilla activities) he made the first recordings of a Screech Owl in the Santa Marta region, now described as a new taxon and new species, and in the same region he recorded the Foliagegleaner which was elevated to species rank some 15 years later as Santa Marta Foliagegleaner based on voice!

In 1995, while birding in Peru, an accident involving a Bushmaster snake had near-fatal consequences. Peter miraculously survived, but lost his complete right leg. Less than a year later however, he made his first attempts to get back in the field, he continued recording bird vocalizations and did several bird-censuses of areas in NW Venezuela.

Later he moved to the USA for his job, where he published a pioneering CD-ROM ‘Birds of Venezuela, photographs, sounds and distributions’ (1999). From his new base, it didn’t take him long to venture into the northern side of the neotropics: Mexico. Even when the job called him back to Belgium, he continued travelling to Mexico, and after some years he had not only visited most corners of this magnificent country, but gathered a vast collection of bird song recordings. In the same way, he could not resist the tempting treasure of birds in Brazil.

At the end of 2005, he again came up with a pioneering idea to publish a large set of bird song recordings on a single MP3 CD per country, for Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, the start of his famous set of ‘MP3 sound collections’.

Back in Belgium, he decided it was time also for this region to have some fresh new recordings (surprisingly, very little had been published of his home country in recent decades!). He acquired the latest digital recording equipment and visited all corners of Belgium and the Netherlands. A few years later, Peter could again deliver, this time an incredible MP3 multimedia fieldguide of the birds of Belgium and the Netherlands. The novelty not only being the excellent sound recordings, but also the unique combination of sound, pictures, distribution maps and text in a format useable on both PC/Mac and MP3 players. His latest achievements in the neotropics rightly deserve the term ‘monumental’. In 2009, for the first time the vocalizations of Peru were documented in a single work (containing no less than 3350 recordings of some 1530 Peruvian bird species). In a similar way he documented the birds of Costa Rica. Then came the update for Brazil and Venezuela (in which no less than 4600 resp. 4200 recordings are included), and his last work in the Neotropics treated Colombia with a staggering 5575 recordings of 1644 species. An amazing coverage of the Neotropics !

Besides publishing birdsound collections, Peter is also transferring his experience in other ways, and since the ‘Handbook of the Birds of the World’ has gone on-line, Peter is an editor for HBW Alive, focusing on the voice section for all bird species. He also wrote Ornithological Notes about vocal differences for some 400 (!) species to support the renewed HBW/Birdlife taxonomy.

Through the years, Peter has accumulated a bird sound collection of some 28000 recordings, almost all of which are now available on the internet. He has published vocalizations of more bird species than anyone in the world by now, despite his serious physical handicap! He hopes to continue doing so in the future, with more focus however on the Old World.

HOW SOUND PACKAGES WORK IN BIRDSEYE

Purchasing this package gives you access to a large collection of bird sounds, all within BirdsEye. It also gives you access to the BirdsEye images and text, as well as the eBird data available for the species that are included in the package.

You can download it to your phone for offline use and remove it to free up space as often as you wish. You can access this package on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, so long as they are all registered to your BirdsEye account. To download all of the sounds for offline use, just go to “Settings” and then choose “Download for Offline”. Enjoy!

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Banded Pennant by Michael Moore

We’re excited to announce that our partnership with OdonataCentral continues with OdeLog – the OdonataCentral Mobile App.  OdeLog will allow you to record checklists of odes you observe in the field from your smartphone.

Many people keep records of the odes they observe but only a tiny fraction of these potentially important observations make their way into public databases. The goal of OdonataCentral is to capture this valuable information and make it available to the public forever and for free. OdeLog is designed to make collecting and managing ode sightings easier and more fun.

Currently our plan is to make OdeLog a free app if we can raise enough donations to make this goal feasible. Our goal is to release it before the peak of the summer ode season.

As early supporters of eBird, we believe that it is an excellent model of how to set up a citizen science project. Not only is eBird fun and easy to use, perhaps most importantly, the data are useful to scientists for large-scale population monitoring of population, seasonality and distribution.

To accomplish our goal of building the “eBird for Odes”, we will follow these guiding principles:

Flame Skimmer by Jeff Harding

1. All the observations will go into OdonataCentral/MDP.We don’t believe it makes sense to create another separate citizen science database. Instead we would prefer to see our efforts go towards improving an already excellent database. Note that OdonataCentral and the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership share an underlying database.
2. Our goal is to maintain three types of data: A) the Odonata Central records that have passed their careful vetting process. These will mostly consist of rare sightings or difficult to identify species;         B) publicly shared data that can be accessed by all users that go through a less rigorous automatic vetting process (under development) and consists of more common species; C) your personal records will be maintained in the database regardless of their vetting status so you can access your own data and maintain your own lists. You will be able to filter the data to only see the data type you want.
3. Users will be encouraged to enter complete checklists of the odes observed in a specified time and location, including counts. Our goal is to not only  capture sightings of rare species but to also encourage sightings of common species.  This information is the most valuable in understanding the long term trends for the health of ode populations and their habitats.
4. Checklists should be associated with an observation protocol. The observation protocol indicates the type and level of effort that went into recording the sightings. Protocol encompasses things like distance traveled, time spent, area surveyed, etc.
5. Users should be encouraged and enabled to identify dragonflies to the best of their ability, but not beyond.  We will provide the option to report things like: “Northern/Boreal Bluet”, “Bluet sp.”, Libellula sp. or even just “Dragonfly sp.” If users aren’t sure, we don’t’ want to force them to guess. Users should be encouraged and able to report odes in all of their life stages.

You can help make this happen! This project is not expected to earn money. Everyone involved in this project is doing it out of a sense of just how valuable (and awesomely fun!) it would be to have this tool available for ourselves and other nature lovers. If you are interested in helping as a tester, as a user, as a contributor of text or photos, or financially please make your contribution online through the options at the top this page, or email us at support@getbirdseye.com.

More details: Our goal is to make this simple first step available this summer, and we hope it will be before the peak of the dragonfly & damselfly season in most of the US and Canada. Here is a very rough outline:

• It will connect with the OdonataCentral / Migratory Dragonfly Partnership database. Submissions will be tied to OdonataCentral user accounts. New users will need to set up OC accounts to submit sightings.
• Currently we don’t have funding for several critical features including the interface to submit of photos from the app
• We plan to roll out iOS first and then Android.
• Clearly the data will be of a different type than the 100% vouchered data currently in OdonataCentral and in that sense will be more like Migratory Dragonfly Partnership data. We do not want to (pick your favorite pejorative) “dilute” that data with unvetted submissions . On the other hand, we do believe that this new data will be valuable and should be available through the OC website. So we will find ways to allow users to view just traditional OC data, this new OC data or both together.
• Initially it will only be possible to submit data through the OdeLog app, but we plan to build out the portions of the OC website that will allow OC users to submit observations online as well.

The post Preorder/Support OdeLog appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

Store credit is available for any amount, and can either be emailed directly to the recipient, or printed out and presented. The recipient will receive a coupon code with which they can redeem towards any product in the BirdsEye store.

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Similar to our BirdsEye apps, the new Bumble Bee app will feature lists of nearby species of bumble bees for any location in North America, sightings maps + brand new range maps created with data from Bumble Bee Watch, and descriptive text to help you identify any unknown species you encounter in the field. We think this app will be a fantastic tool for any naturalist in the field!

We are seeking donations to support the development of these new apps. The iPhone and Android versions are on target for a release in fall 2015. Donations will not only get you a copy of the app as soon it is launched, but you will also have the option to beta test them before launch. We don’t know what the final price of the apps will be, but preordering will help us reach our goal of releasing it in fall 2015.

Donations of $20 or more will also qualify you for beta testing.

The post Preorder/Support Bumble Bee app appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

LEARN
• Use Smart Search to quickly identify a species by color, size and habitat
• Read descriptive text to help confirm the identification (contact us if you’d like to help!)
• View the crowd-sourced gallery of images (contribute your photos at birdseye.photo/dragonflies)

ENGAGE
• Track your life list via the app for any region
• Sign in with an OdonataCentral account to see your sightings populate your life lists

Dragonfly ID is a collaboration between BirdsEye and the folks at OdonataCentral and the Xerces Society with special thanks to the membership of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas and users of OdonataCentral, the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership, and PondWatch for their data contributions.

The post Dragonfly ID for iOS appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

This membership covers all the species in Hawaii and the South Pacific with bird finding text written by regional experts. Includes text and images for most species.

Areas covered: Hawaii and the South Pacific, including Micronesia and Polynesia (but not Melanesia). West to Palau and Yap, south to Fiji and Tonga, east Pitcairn.

HOW MEMBERSHIPS WORK IN BIRDSEYE

Subscribing to a BirdsEye membership gives you access to the full list of birds in that region. Your membership gives you access to all of the user-contributed BirdsEye images as well as text written by regional experts. For all the birds on the list, you will also have access to eBird sighting information. Information about all the birds in the world is now right at your fingertips!

Additional features available just to Members* include:

• Select Months view (browse locations for any month of the year) *
• Unlimited Favorite Locations *
• Search for Notables up to 250 miles from current location
• Up to 10 checklists for Notable and Rare species
• Download content for offline use

*Member features starred above are only available for BirdsEye iOS. They are still in development on Android.

The post Hawaii and the South Pacific Membership appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

“Best invention for birding since binoculars”… Kenn Kaufman, author of the famed Kaufman Field Guides to Birds of North America

“A landmark in birding”… John Fitzpatrick, Director, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

The free version of BirdsEye is great for beginning and intermediate birders. It shows you the 100 most common birds near you (or for any spot on earth), which is fantastic for birders who want to learn about the birds you are most likely to see in your yard or the local park.

Paid subscriptions options are available to give you access to every countable species in your region or worldwide.

Features:

INSTANT BIRD LISTS
• See customized lists of birds reported recently near you, at birding hotspots, or any random point on earth!
• Sea seasonal abundance for each bird for that location
• View recent eBird sightings and get driving directions to each one

INCREASE YOUR LIFE LIST
• See a list of “needs” – species recently reported nearby that aren’t on your selected life or year list
• Automatically sync your life or year lists with eBird for the ABA area, world, country, state or even county!

TRIP PLANNING
• Find additional content in the Bird Guide Store for other continents, including sounds, images and bird-finding tips from local experts.
• Support for bird names in several languages

STORE
We have partnered with Birdsounds.nl, the premier online store selling bird sounds packages for many regions around the world. Access these extensive collections of bird songs from right inside of BirdsEye.

Currently available sound packages include:
Bird Sounds of Costa Rica, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Northern Siberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Peru, Colombia, Belgium and Holland with more coming soon!

Most BirdsEye functionality is available to all of our users. Certain premium features require a regional or world membership to unlock their full potential. These membership features include:
• Downloading content for offline usage

The post BirdsEye for Android appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

We are seeking donations to support the development of these new apps. Our goal is to release these apps in Fall of 2015. Pre-purchasing/donations will not only get you a copy of the app as soon it is launched, but you will also have the option to beta test them before launch. At this point we do not know what the price of the app will be when it is launched, but all donations help offset the development costs and speed up the release!

Donations of $20 or more will also qualify you for beta testing.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail © Dan Tallman

The post Preorder BirdsEye for Butterflies appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

“Best invention for birding since binoculars”… Kenn Kaufman, author of the famed Kaufman Field Guides to Birds of North America

“A landmark in birding”… John Fitzpatrick, Director, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

The free version of BirdsEye is great for beginning and intermediate birders. It shows you the 100 most common birds near you (or for any spot on earth), which is fantastic for birders who want to learn about the birds you are most likely to see in your yard or the local park.

Paid subscriptions options are available to give you access to every countable species in your region or worldwide.

Features:

INSTANT BIRD LISTS
• See customized lists of birds reported recently near you, at birding hotspots, or any random point on earth!
• Sea seasonal abundance for each bird for that location
• View recent eBird sightings and get driving directions to each one

INCREASE YOUR LIFE LIST
• See a list of “needs” – species recently reported nearby that aren’t on your selected life or year list
• Reports of rare and notable birds in your area and across the ABA region
• Automatically sync your life or year lists with eBird for the ABA area, world, country, state or even county!

TRIP PLANNING
• Find additional content in the Bird Guide Store for other continents, including sounds, images and bird-finding tips from local experts.
• Set Favorite Locations for your destinations to scope out recent sightings
• Get driving directions right to any hotspot or sighting
• Support for bird names in several languages

STORE
We have partnered with Birdsounds.nl, the premier online store selling bird sounds packages for many regions around the world. Access these extensive collections of bird songs from right inside of BirdsEye.

Currently available sound packages include:
Bird Sounds of Costa Rica, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, Northern Siberia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Peru, Colombia, Belgium and Holland with more coming soon!

Most BirdsEye functionality is available to all of our users. Certain premium features require a regional or world membership to unlock their full potential. These membership features include:
• More checklists for species on the Rare Bird Alert (vs 3 for free users)
• List of recently reported ABA rarities
• Search for Notables up to 250 miles from current location (vs up to 50 miles for free users)
• Unlimited Favorite Locations (vs 5 for free users)
• Select Months view (only Recents for free users)
• Downloading content for offline usage

The post BirdsEye for iOS appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

BirdsEye Costa Rica is a comprehensive library of the birds in Costa Rica, and includes images for 835 species and text for 853 species.

BirdsEye Costa Rica is a simple but powerful tool for birders. It is simple, easy and fast to use so you can spend your time seeing birds!

• See birds reported near you with local abundance information
• Find the birds you need! See which birds that have been seen recently, but which are not on your list!
• Browse detailed maps of bird sightings, nearby or worldwide
• view photos, text, and and some sounds
• track your year or life list manually, or download it automatically from eBird
• Plan your next birding trip – find Hotspots near you or where you’re headed
• Connect to Wikipedia and Flickr from within BirdsEye for more information and photos
• Locate unusual birds in the Rare & Notable sightings section
• BirdsEye Cost Rica works best with an internet connection. You can also use it in the field by downloading text and images for use offline.

Accessing BirdsEye Costa Rica

BirdsEye Costa Rica is a regional library of the birds of Costa Rica that is accessed through the BirdEye Bird Finding Guide available as a free download from iTunes or the Google Play store. For more information please see Accessing your Regional Version of BirdsEye.

Using BirdsEye Offline

You can download included images to your phone for offline use and remove it to free up space as often as you wish. You can access this package on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android so long as they are all registered to your BirdsEye account. To download all of the content for offline use, just go back to the package detail page and tap the download button. Enjoy!

You can also access the birds of Mexico and Central Americas through a monthly or annual subscription to BirdsEye Mexico, Central America Membership.

HOW REGIONAL PACKAGES WORK IN BIRDSEYE

Purchasing this package gives you access to a list of birds for the selected region. It also gives you access to all of the user-contributed BirdsEye images as well as text written by regional experts. For all the birds on the list, you will also have access to eBird sighting information.

The post BirdsEye Costa Rica appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.