Subject: birding by ear
Date: Mar 22 12:56:21 1996
From: Serge Le Huitouze - serge at cs.sfu.ca


Katie Sauter writes:
>
> None of this is to suggest that bird *watching* isn't also satisfying and
> valuable: the kind of information you get from seeing birds is inherently
> different from that you can gather by just listening. However, although
> learning the songs/calls can be difficult and frustrating (and of little
> use when you move to a new area and have to start from scratch!),

Actually, I wouldn't totally agree with you here: Though it *is* frustating
to be in a new area where you barely know 5% of the songbirds (that has been
the case for me, coming from France), knowing the songs of birds from other
areas (Europe, for me) is definitely a plus. The more species songs you know,
the easier it is to learn new songs. You end up having reference points you can
use to "position" new songs relatively to the ones you already know.
All that being said, I'll nevertheless have hard time in 2 weeks with arizonian
birds :-)

> it's well worth the effort.

Agreed :-)


--
--------------------------------------------------
The Comet cometh, Gromit gromith.
Serge Le Huitouze Intelligent Software Group
email: serge at cs.sfu.ca School of Computing Science
tel: (604) 291-5423 Simon Fraser University
fax: (604) 291-3045 Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6 CANADA