On Fri, 31 Mar 1995, Harriet Whitehead wrote:

> Another concession: many birds have more than one quality
> register - scolding wrens are in a different 'voice' than singing wrens,
> for instance - and thus the 'test' suggested by Chris of having people
> listen to one of the lesser known vocalizations of a species could surely
> be designed to trip "voice quality" hearers up. Of course hearers who
> focus more on pattern or who quantify are going to have problems with
> rare vocalizations as well.

Very good point - I would agree that *within* call types (like wren song
and wren chatter), tonal quality is perhaps as useful, or more useful
than, pattern. I meant mainly to emphasize that there is no predictable
voice characteristic that applies to all vocalizations of a species, and
that you could not program in the "species voice characteristics" of a
Bewick's Wren - you would have to put in the characteristics of each of
maybe 15 call types of Bewick's Wren if you wanted your software to work
right ;)

I would personally say that depending on the species OOPS, I mean the
particular song or call in question, I use pattern sometimes, and voice
or tonal quality other times. For what it's worth.

As an aside, the more I learn, the more I am impressed with how different
the vocal apparatus and its product are for birds (from us). I mean,
based on humans, or mammals in general, or even amphibians, you would
predict that the bigger the body size, the louder and lower pitched the
call repertoire - but compare a wren's chatter (low) with an eagle's
mewling (high), or just listen to the volume of sound that a Carolina
Wren, for example, can put out, all 20 grams of it, and you know that
it's a different system.

Chris Hill
Seattle, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu