Forum Role: Participant
Active Since: September 22, 2016
Topics Started: 0
Replies Created: 5

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • John
    Participant
    Although I've been recording bird songs and calls for many years, I picked up many useful tips from the course. Thank you to the instructors and the Bird Academy! For anyone having trouble identifying a sound in your recordings, I suggest asking experienced birders in your area to listen to your recording and give you their opinions on the unknowns. I think you will find them very happy to help. I still ask others for help on a regular basis and I have a standing offer to anyone in our birding community to try to help them with an unknown in a recording. I also learn a good deal from these interactions. This sharing of expertise helps build a community of keen bird-listeners. Photographers have been doing this for years. Here in Salmon Arm, British Columbia,  we have a small group of us that go on bird-listening field trips together specifically to enjoy, and often record, bird sounds. My go-to editting software is RavenLite, free software from Cornell. My primary frustration with using RavenLite is that I haven't figured a way to save my view settings (time scale, frequency range) between recordings.This would be very useful when comparing a series of recordings. Right now I'm taking a close look at Canada Jay vocalizations from across its range in North America and standardizing time/frequency display settings between recordings would be wonderful. I was surprised to not to see RavenLite software as one of the software options and wonder why. I've downloaded Ocenaudio and will give it a try. The lessons certainly illustrated how user-friendly it is! I've seen a few bits of field equipment in the videos that I'd like more details on. A suggestion for the course would be to include some form of appendix that gives the specifics (brand name, model name) of the equipment shown. Creating personal library of bird sounds is a source of joy and has allowed me to repeatedly relive special moments in nature while also sharing these experiences with others via eBird. Good luck and happy bird-listening to all. John
  • John
    Participant
    1. To capture more detail in my bird photos, especially feather structure. 2. To create a portfolio of bird photographs illustrating behaviours such as singing, flying, preening, eating. 3. To learn enough about editting RAW images to determine whether taking RAW photos is worth the processing time and file storage space in my photo collection.
  • John
    Participant
    Although the visual results were humbling, I felt the exercise has helped me see the entire object and think about what I want to include in a drawing in advance of putting pencil to paper. Although the drawings started well, I soon lost a sense of proportion on the page as I tried to move my hand away from the start. I had to be absolutely focused as my mind's eye tried to transfer visual input into hand movement.
  • John
    Participant
    I choose late-season wild Snowberry and Rose fruits for my comparison. What I really enjoyed about this exercise is how it made me look for detail and to appreciate the beauty that can be found in natural objects as they start to disintegrate at the end of the season. I especially liked the shape of the curved rose thorns when you look very closely. While snowberries appear white from a distance, when I held them against a the snow, they are actually a light, creamy white. For fun, I tried out the watercolours to add another dimension to the page. It is very hard to make something look white (or creamy white) on a white journal page! John 2020_11_13
  • John
    Participant
    I enjoyed the fact that the Yellow Warbler wasn't moving! I needed to look at the details over-and-over and revise-revise-revise the sketch when something didn't look right (e.g., eye placement). I was fortunate to have several living (YEWAs) encouraging me along outside my cabin as I worked. I hear them all the time but getting a look is a challenge. I wonder if I will every be able to draw from a glimpse... Feather placement on the wings would have been extremely difficult without the photo. I could have spent hours trying to get them right but this was a supposed to be sketch. Compared to photography, I really liked to be able to annotate my drawing. John2020-05-22 16.54.33
    in reply to: Jump Right in! #704472
Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)