What does a "practiced" ear mean? do you mean that your ears are better than
mine because you have been listening since you were 13? I have been
listening since I was 8! I am now 47 so you could say I have been bird
listening for nearly 40years, that does not make me better than you!

If you have made a sonogram from a CD of an 8 second track then I'm sorry,
this has no credibility I'm afraid, listen to the bird for a long period of
time in the field, record it and then put it on a sonogram, you will see a
similar pattern in frequency, birds have various vocalizations as I had said
in my previous posts, why then would someone on this group ID a purple finch
when indeed it was a house finch? You can not argue a point on a CD sample
I'm afraid, I have hours of various finch recordings and I bet you I could
put some sound bytes together that would confuse the heck out of you.

By the way, what an awful comparison to make, Britney spears and Ella
Fitzgerald!
Ella can sing, Britney can't, All finches can sing :)

Regards

Martyn

Martyn Stewart
Birds Sounds Digitally Recorded at:
http://www.naturesound.org
N47.65543 W121.98428
Redmond. Washington. USA
Make every Garden a wildlife Habitat


-----Original Message-----
From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
[mailto:TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Mike Patterson
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 8:07 AM
To: Tweeters
Subject: Re: Distinguishing Purple Finch and House Finch songs

I have to say I'm with Wayne on this. Finch songs are
pretty different to a practiced ear (I started at age 13
and am coming up on 34 years now).

I made a sonogram from recodings sampled for Keller's
"Bird Songs of California". House Finch is higher, more
rambly and contains more fuzzy notes. Purple Finch is
lower, richer and more robin-like.

http://home.pacifier.com/~neawanna/temp/finch_sono.jpg

It's sort of like comparing Britney Spears to Ella Fitzgerald.
Britney's competent and catchy, but there's something missing.
Ella's a professional, robust and unmistakable.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne C. Weber
To: MARTYN STEWART
Cc: TWEETERS
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 10:05 AM
Subject: Distinguishing Purple Finch and House Finch songs


> Martyn,
>
> Unlike your experience, I have never had any difficulty in
> distinguishing Purple Finch songs from House Finch songs. Bravery is
> not involved here. I would describe a typical Purple Finch song as
> being longer and more rapidly delivered than House Finch songs, and
> without the burry notes so typical of House Finches. Purple Finch
> songs also usually include mimicry of call-notes of several other
> species-- have you noticed this? It should be possible to confirm
> this by comparing sonagrams.

--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
celata at pacifier.com

Half-a-bee, philosophically must ipso-facto half not-be.
But half the bee, has got to bee Vis-a-vis its entity...
d'you see?
But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee due to some ancient injury?
-Monty Python

http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html