Return to Arkansas

The birds in the March in Arkansas are very different from those in Soutern California. When I arrived in the Hot Springs area of Arkansas and unpacked I set out the bird feeders. Nothing happened for a day and a half and then the word got out to all my feathered friends. In 15 minutes I had the following species at my feeders:

Carolina Chickadee

American Goldfinch

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downey Woodpecker

Eastern Bluebird

Tufted Titmouse

Carolina Wren

Dark-eyed Junco

Northern Cardinal

Purple Finch

Pine Siskin

Northern Flicker

I heard a Fish Crow and Red-shouldered Hawk. Not bad for 15 minutes.

Let's continue our history of voice recognition. Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 - 2 August 1922) had the next major impact on the development of this subject. He invented the telephone and changed the world forever. Bell's mother and wife were both deaf. His grandfather, father and brother were associated with elocution and speech. The interest and the background for the invention of the telephone were in place and in 1876 he was awarded a patent for the invention of the telephone. (Wikipedia)

The patenting of the telephone was not a straightforward as it may seem. Independently, Elisha Gray invented the same device. His patent was submitted within a few hours of Bell's. The patent was granted to Bell. A very famous legal battle ensued but Bell won after years of legal fighting.

Now back home I will mention BirdAudio's favorite Audubon chapter. The Hot Springs Village Audubon is one of the larger Audubon groups and includes many retired members. This creates a chapter that is very active. I have pasted an example of some of our activities.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS
-Meetings are held the second Friday of each month at 10:00 a.m. at Coronado Center.
-The July meeting is a potluck at Cortez Pavilion and there is no August meeting.
-March 14 Carolyn Minson, HSV Audubon President, will present a program on Birding in Costa Rica
-April 11 Joe Mosby, a feature writer with the Village Voice, will give a program on Wood Ducks
-May 9 Dan Scheiman, Audubon Arkansas Director of Bird Conservation, will give a program on
songbirds and their songs
-June 13 HSV Audubon member Fred Garcia will present a program on the Monarch butterfly
-July 11 Annual Potluck at Cortez Pavilion, Angie Reid Morrow, one of our former campers from
Jessieville who has gone on to get a PhD in physical therapy, will speak about the impact her
experiences at the camp had on her life. We also meet the Halberg Ecology Campers
sponsored by HSV Audubon in the 2008 sessions
-September 12 Rusty Scarborough, Education Program Coordinator at Delta Rivers Nature Center, will present a program All About Owls
FIELD TRIPS
-April 14 Wildflower walk Middle Fork Barrens off Burk Road, Owensville, with Susan Hooks,
Forest Botanist/Range Program Manager, Ouachita National Forest; meet at 9:00 a.m. in the
parking lot at the corner of Hwy 5 and the entrance road into the East Gate
-April 16 Wildflower walk on Cedar Creek Trail; meet at 9:00 a.m. at Cedar Creek in Parking Lot A
-May 2 Harris Brake, birding—meet 7:30 a.m. in the parking lot at the corner of Hwy 5 and the
entrance road into the East Gate
-May 24 Spring Arts and Crafts Fair at Coronado Center, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
-June 9 Middle Fork Barrens, wildflower walk to find Pelton's gentian-rose and other wildflowers
-June 17 Waldron, Poteau Ranger District Ouachita National Forest, to see Painted Buntings and Red Cockaded Woodpeckers
-June 25 Red Slough Wetland Wildlife Management Area, Oklahoma, with David Arbour overnight trip
-July 25 First trip to Perk Floyd's to watch hummingbirds being banded
-August 1 Second trip to Perk Floyd's to watch hummingbirds being banded
-September 24 Community Fair, Coronado Center, highlights Village organizations

This number of activities is excellent for a group where some have to carry oxygen bottles to participate!

The songs provided for BirdAudio were recorded by Kevin Colver. Kevin also works with others in the bird song business the most famous of which are Don and Lillian Stokes. Kevin's sound quality is excellent and his response to questions regarding his recording prompt and on target. Visit the BirdAudio website and buy the songs.

Until next month: Good birding.

Kathie

Beginnings of Voice Recognition

Although not claiming to be an expert in the field of speech recognition I spent some time researching the history of the subject when I began to develop the company's software. We define speech recognition as converting words into machine readable input producing a human readable output. Although music boxes had been around for centuries the first reference (Winkipedia) I can find to match our definition is an invention by Leon Scott called the phonoautograph in 1857. Leon Scott (see picture at left) was a French printer and bookseller. The recording medium in his phonoautograph was a piece of smoked paper attached to the surface of a drum which, when rotated, moved forwards along a helical screw. A stylus was attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, which moved in a lateral direction when the diaphragm was vibrated by a voice. This caused a wavy line to be traced on the smoked paper. A barrel shaped mouthpiece was also included in the design. While not exactly the BirdAudio type recognition we have today for birdsongs the phonoautograph does match our criteria. Next month I'll discuss Alexander Graham Bell's contribution to this fasicnating field.




There is a new, very interesting site that birders and especially birders that video birds should know about. http://www.birdcinema.com/ is trying to become the You-Tube for birders. If you have tried to catch nature videos on You-Tube you know that they are few and far between, especially videos of quality. Bird Cinema has remarkable videos uploaded by bird enthusists from around the world. The videos of a Red-tailed hawk and a Prarie falcon catching bats in Texas is amazing. There are tutorials for uploading your video, videos from broadcasts and still photos galore. Stop by and plan to spend a few hours seeing some awsome and endearing videos.

Scrub jays are one species that come to my bird breakfast table. I always put out a couple of peanuts. They so look forward to this that they will fly down and almost take them from my hand. Last week I noticed a female House finch pecking on the ground and acting oddly. When the other finches would fly up into the laural bush because of some imagined threat this gal just looked up as if to say, "I know I should fly but I just can't." I went out to see if I could find something obviously wrong with her but she was gone when I got there. The next morning after the jay got his peanuts he went behind a rock and hauled out a dead female finch. He flew off with the bird. I have to think is was the same bird that was acting so strangely the day before. Does anyone know of Scrub jays eating carrion?


Last year we sent a copy of our BirdAudio software to WildBird magazine for their review. The March/April issue has a small piece about BirdAudio. Go to page 62 to get their take on our birding software.


Until next month.

BirdAudio Starts A Blog

BirdAudio has recently launched voice-activated bird song software. The company has invested in bird songs and voice recognition. Therefore, the purpose of this blog is to build on this, invite discussions on these subject and as well as posting my birding thoughts and experiences. Comments are welcome from all.

During the conceptional phase of the idea I spoke with others about the concept and the most common suggestion was that it would be far better to listen to the song and have the software say the name of the bird. I must agree. It would also be nice if when you saw a bird you could not identify he would turn aroung and show a sign with his species. The biggest drawback to this approach is the size of the equipment. Think of those big dishes at football games that collect sound. One could not easily carry it into the field. In fact, a company called, Wildlife Acoustics did develop such a system. They stopped production in 2006. I do not know all of the reasons for the stoppage but size might have been one factor.

However, speaking into a microphone does not require any large piece of equipment. So, BirdAudio was developed using a "field guide" approach. That is, one has to put a name to the bird and then verify by using the software. Just as with a field guide one has to know about where to look for a picture of a bird before confirming the name of the bird a user must guess the correct bird and then confirm with the BirdAudio software buy saying the bird's name.

First, a little background on my comings and goings. I spend spring and fall in my home in Hot Springs Village AR. Summers and winters are in Southern California with my children and grandchildren. When talking to friends often the first question is, "Where are you?" As it is now January I am in SoCal.

At our property in CA we are lucky to have numerous mature fruit trees. Our lime tree is a prodigious producer. Even if I were an alcoholic drinking Corona with limes I could not consume or give away all of the limes the tree drops. However, there is a food bank nearby that happily takes the limes and gives them to needy people. In return I get any bread too old to give away to their clients. Twice a day I put out bread for the birds and have attracted a swarm of winter migrants to the feed. The most common birds at this time of year are White-crowned sparrows and Dark-eyed juncos. There are a few mammals that enjoy the bread too. The most common are the rabbits and ground squirrels but occasionally a fox squirrel shows up. Today, there was a hermit thrush eating some of the seeds from a nearby laurel.

There is one remaining bird walk the the San Fernando Valley Audubon will be leading. On Jan. 27 at 8:00 am there will be a walk at Descanso Gardens. Go to http://www.sfvaudubon.org/ for information on future walks. The Los Angeles chapter of Audubon is planning a trip to the Salton Sea, Jan 26 and 27. Go to http://www.laaudubon.org/ for more details. Finally, the Pasadena Audubon will have a walk at the Huntington Library on Jan. 27. Go to http://www.pasadenaaudubon.org/ for all Pasadena activities.