One Earth, Many Voices
Here is a brief video clip of a Common Coqui singing. Note how he warms up with single low-pitched notes before launching into his full call: ko … ko … ko … ko-keee … ko-keee … ko-keee …
I hope you like my coqui video. This was the only male I found who lent himself well to being videotaped. Please let me know what you think of him!
What a shocking change … in a matter of just six hours we transition from a humid tropical rainforest biome with temperatures in the high 80s (F) to a late winter north temperate snow-covered landscape with temperatures in the 30s. This seems almost incongrous, with coquis still sounding off in my head as a frigid breeze blows against my face. How can this be?
This morning I finally did some homework related to coqui frogs of the genus Eleutherodactylus. I thought there were only eight or nine species in Puerto Rico, but a quick online search came up with a list of sixteen species, several of which may be extinct. My goodness, I had no idea there were that many of them!
My next move will be to get in touch with Alberto López-Torres, a biologist who is doing field work on the coquis of Puerto Rico and who happens to live in Ithaca right now. No doubt he will help me identify the species in my recordings. Once that happens, I plan to do a final post with Alberto that will include a summary of the conservation status of species in Puerto Rico.
You may wonder why I didn’t perform an in-depth exploration the biology of coquis before I went on my trip. My reasons are twofold. First, I simply didn’t have the time, working non-stop on other projects until the day of our departure. But another and perhaps more important reason is that I wanted to encounter the Puerto Rican soundscape with an open, unencumbered mind and with a concentration on the subjective quality of the sounds that I heard.
Exploring with only a general notion of “coqui” in my mind, I believe, kept me more open to experiencing the soundscapes purely from the standpoint of aesthetics. And this in turn effected the quality of my recordings. If I went at it with an inner mandate to document as many species as possible, that goal would likely have dominated the process and produced a noticeably different result.
Do you understand what I’m saying?
I took the same approach during my trip to Australia last autumn. Though I ended up getting many of my recordings identified in terms of species, that was not my reason-to-be, not my inner mandate. I approached it as an artist might, homing-in on textures of sound that I found compelling, interesting, immersive, and often relaxing. That is the way I like to work these days, attempting to empty my mind so that I can fully experience the magic and beauty when it comes my way.
Clearly, I am more interested in embracing the quality of sounds that I perceive than I am in identifying the species making the sounds or attempting to understand the evolutionary forces that brought the sounds into being. The former approach has to do with surrendering to the senses, while the latter involves a lot of thinking and explaining.
How to end this post? How about an extremely pleasing dawn chorus from El Yunque National Forest, featuring frogs and birds?:
El Yunque at dawn with coquis, Scaly-naped Pigeons, Bananaquit, etc. March 2013. Copyright Lang Elliott.
The Common Coqui (Eleutherodactylus coqui) is not the only member of the genus to inhabit the forests, fields, and roadsides of Puerto Rico. I believe there are sixteen species altogether. While I made no effort to search them all out, I did stumble upon several having interesting calls.
My favorite (other than E. coqui) is a frog I have named “Beautiful Tinkler.” I never actually saw one, so it is possible this is an insect and not a frog at all. The tinkler inhabits moist grassy areas next to rainforest. It’s jumbled tinkling calls are a delight to behold. And in almost every occasion that I have found them, there was the very high-pitched shuffling of long-horned katydids.
Below is my best example of Beautiful Tinklers, heard along with Common Coquis, katydids, crickets of some sort, and possibly yet another frog that gives a high-pitched dry trill sounding like tk-tk-tk-tk-tik:
Beautiful Tinklers and other frogs and insects recorded in El Yunque National Forest. March 2013. Copyright Lang Elliott.
Another standout frog I have named the “Pip Frog,” a species whose call is a rapidly-repeated liquid pip or peet. I found this species calling in groups in wet, grassy seeps along highways and sometimes in low, wet areas in rainforest. An additional species of frog was often found in the same habitat, its metallic call sound like p’teek! As you might have already guessed, I’ve christened it the “P’Teek Frog”. In the following recording, listen for all three species calling, along with several kinds of insects:
Pips, T’Deeks, and Common Coquis recorded in El Yunque National Forest. March 2013. Copyright Lang Elliott.
Well folks, this is the last of my “on location” Puerto Rico blog posts. We leave today at noon and I will be back in Ithaca by evening. I hear it has snowed a good six inches, so I am likely to return to a whitened landscape. Quite a contrast … hot tropical rainforest at noon and then snow covered hills by evening. What a wonderful trip this has been, a magical week in spent in caribbean tropical rainforest.
I am now intimately familiar with what it’s like to bask in a chorus of coquis, and my memories of their calls are unlikely to fade anytime soon. I fully expect to hear them in my dreams for months to come, even as I embrace the unfolding of spring and summer in the wonderland I call home.
Let the following recording officially mark the end of my journey… a small stream in the rainforest recorded at first light this morning. Enjoy the gurgling of the water, the calls of coquis, the high-pitched shuffles of a katydid (for those with excellent hearing), and the splats of dewdrops hitting palm leaves overhead:
Stream at dawn with Coqui frogs, recorded along highway in central Puerto Rico, March 2013. Copyright Lang Elliott.
Let me know what you think!
While visiting dry tropical scrubland near Guanica on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico, we recorded the Puerto Rican Nightjar, singing at dusk. Bob got some amazing closeups and I recorded a relaxing soundscape that features two nightjars, along with the eveloping whoosh of ocean waves washing into the shoreline about a quarter-mile away. Here is that recording.
Ocean Waves rushing and Puerto Rican Nightjars singing, recorded at dusk in dry tropical scrub forest near Guanica, Puerto Rico. 7pm, 23 March 2013. Copyright Lang Elliott.
As the soundscape unfolded, truly amazing things began happening in the sky. It had just rained, and dark clouds floated about, alternating with blue sky and sometimes bright windows or tunnels through which sunshine could be seen. The photo featured below blows my mind in more ways than one. Let me know how it effects you:
We arrived safely in Puerto Rico on Thursday afternoon and made our way without incident to the Casa Cabuy Ecolodge on the south edge of El Yunque National Forest. Quite a beautiful location, but we were disappointed to find that loud stream noise permeated the entire area … without doubt, we will have to hike into the high country to find a good spot for recording.
Common Coqui chorus featuring a close individual, recorded around 2 am in the cool of the night. 22 March, 2013. El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico. Copyright Lang Elliott, All Rights Reserved.
At nightfall, the coquis (the Common Coqui and several related species) began singing in earnest. Excited at the prospects, we grabbed our gear and hiked up a road that quickly transitioned into a wet trail through forest, grassy clearings and muddy spots. The road used to go all the way to the top of the mountain, but a large landslide about halfway up destroyed it many years ago.
After an hour or two of hiking, we came upon the landslide. Bob was having trouble with new boots causing blisters, so he decided to stay put. I forged (blundered?) ahead, following the trail up and beyond, and by midnight I had pulled away from the valley stream noise and I no longer could hear the distant sounds of motorcycles and cars from inhabited areas far below.
Lang chatting about his coqui experience. Early am, 22 March, 2013. El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico. Copyright Lang Elliott, All Rights Reserved.
In the wee hours of morning, I enjoyed a pristine nighttime rainforest experience. The frog and insect chorus mellowed with cooling temperatures, and I spent several hours looking for pleasing mixtures of sounds that would convey the magic that I heard and felt. Periodically, I would lay down on the trail, shut my eyes, and listen, mesmerized and entranced by the beautiful, dreamy chorus. What an incredible night it was, among the most poignant of my recording adventures.
Several coqui frogs interacting vocally to produce a magical auditory effect. Early am, 22 March, 2013. El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico. Copyright Lang Elliott, All Rights Reserved.
After months of grueling computer work leading to the launch of our new online store, I’m finally breaking free with a weeklong journey to Puerto Rico, accompanied by fellow recordist Bob McGuire. My personal goal is to record soundscapes featuring a tiny tropical frog called the Coqui, the “official mascot” of the Puerto Rican culture. Why is this frog called “Coqui”? Because its sweet call, given from dusk til dawn, sounds very much like co-qui, co-qui, coq-qui …
So now, after four months of inactivity, I am finally re-booting our blog so that I can keep you abreast of our adventure. We leave from my hometown of Ithaca, New York, at 5:30 am on Thursday morning and will be on-location at the south edge of El Yunque National Forest by late Thursday afternoon. If all goes well, I’ll be posting photographs and recordings sometime on Friday. The weather forecast looks very favorable. So please stay tuned … recordings will soon follow … and maybe even a video clip of a Coqui happily singing its cheerful little song.
Best to All,
Lang
In the world of nature sounds, mysteries abound, especially when it comes to weird and puzzling voices of the night …
Not long ago a woman by the name of Gail Canterbury heard a strange squealing sound late one evening in her backyard near Cortland, New York. Her husband Don made a recording with the video camera in his cell phone. He then extracted an mp3 audio file and sent it to a friend who knew a lot about night sounds. Here is the recording:
Mysterious night sound recorded by Gail and Don Canterbury near Cortland, New York in early August, 2012. Extracted from a cell phone video clip.
The friend … Chris Tessaglia-Hymes (who works at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology) was unable to identify the squeals, so he sent the recording to a number of his friends, including me. None of us knew for certain the source of the sound. Some thought porcupine or raccoon, others gray or red fox. My reaction was “raccoon until proven otherwise” because raccoons are so common and they do make squealing and whimpering sounds. But to tell the truth, I did not recognize the squeals, even though they seemed vaguely familiar.
Luckily, the recording kept circulating and then finally, in early November, someone identified it through comparison with a recording by Wil Hershberger that is in the Cornell Lab’s sound collection. You know Wil … he’s a contributor to this blog! Dang-it, we should have sent the mystery recording to him – surely he would have identified it. Right? Here is Wil’s recording:
Squealing calls and bill snaps of upset ?????? near their nest; elicited by the recordist imitating another of their calls. Recorded 12 July 1998 at 5am at Sugarloaf Mountain Natural Area near Clarksburg, Maryland. © Wil Hershberger.
I love it when mysteries are solved! When I first heard Gail’s recording, I sensed that I had heard the call before, but I just couldn’t remember where. Well, it turns out that Wil’s recording is part of our Music of Nature sound collection, and it is featured in our BirdTunes App for the iPhone and iPad. In other words, the answer was right under my nose, but I just didn’t make the connection.
So what is this mystery animal anyway? Wil’s recording contains a clue. Hear those bill snaps? Well, that tells you it’s a bird. But what bird squeals in the dark? How about an owl of some kind … hey, maybe you guessed it: Eastern Screech-Owl! Yes, these are upset calls of screech-owls, probably given near their nest. Such squeals and bill snaps are generally elicited by some kind of disturbance, maybe an approaching human or other predator, or else neighboring screech-owls coming too close.
The moral of the story: even so-called “experts” can easily be stumped. I personally vouch for this because I’ve been accused of being an expert and I’ve been stumped a number of times in recent years, in spite of wandering around in the dark quite a bit more than the average person.
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Mysterious voices of the night abound. Some are made by birds, mammals, frogs, or insects. But do beware … others are made by goblins, ghouls and ghosts … and may the good lord help those foolish souls who attempt to search them out, especially in a graveyard at midnight under the full moon, when the rest of us are fast asleep in the safety of our homes …
Growls and howls of a Ghoul, given just before chowing down on unsuspecting human prey. Take my hard-earned advice: “Don’t visit graveyards after dark!”
*click photo to enlarge in lightbox.
It is the tenth of November, at dusk, and I am gazing at a picturesque bend in the Missouri River. The sky is pink and autumn leaves still cling to oaks on the hillside.
Winter is almost upon us here in North America, yet I am immersed in fresh memories of spring from a faraway land. We have returned from our Australian expedition, arriving at Carl’s home-in-the-woods late last night. I slept a solid twelve hours and still feel as if I need more rest.
Today I browsed a number of recordings I made in Australia. I have a LOT of great material to sift through … enough, I believe, to put together at least two titles (70-min digital download CDs).
Below is a really nice recording made at dusk in dry forest in Pilliga Nature Reserve, not far from Coonabarabran, New South Wales. It includes prominent songs (calls?) of the Noisy Friarbird. What I like most about this recording is the way it ends, with the songs of several additional bird species, including White-plumed Honeyeater and White-throated Treecreeper (thanks to Vicki Powys for ID’s). Note too the measured low-pitched coos of a Common Bronzewing (a kind of dove), heard throughout. At the very end you will hear a single metallic squeak of a Galah (a kind of Cockatoo).
Noisy Friarbird and other species sounding off at dusk. 7pm, 13 October 2012, Pilliga Nature Reserve near Coonabarabran, Australia. © Lang Elliott
Below is a sonogram showing the last minute of the recording. It’s a work of art all by itself, at least to my eyes. My friend and bird song expert Vicki Powys of Australia (caperteebirder.com) has graciously labeled the various species that sound off.
Sunday morn, November 11:
During the winter months my mind always wanders forward into spring. With a smile on my face, I tell my friends that “spring is just around the corner,” even when it is months away. This winter is special indeed, with spring so fresh in my mind, both in hindsight and in foresight. Truly, I feel surrounded and embraced by the warmth of spring, even as the cool autumn rains blows against the window and browning leaves flitter across the wintering landscape.
During my last morning of recording in Australia, I managed to snag a real jewel … the musical song-duetting of a pair of Grey Butcherbirds. What a surprising and delightful “grand finale” to my adventure Down Under.
Song duets of a pair of Grey Butcherbirds. Recorded at sunrise on 6 November 2012 in Karuah National Park, north of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Intervals between duets have been reduced for your listening pleasure. © Lang Elliott, all rights reserved.
The following sonogram shows the particulars … eight songs, all being duets. I followed the pair for nearly an hour in dry forest in Karuah National Park, just north of Newcastle. The is just a small sampling of the thirty or more song duets that I captured.
If you wear headphones or earbuds, you can clearly hear the different locations of the two individuals and their relative contributions to each song outburst. I’m not entirely sure how you can tell which is the male and which is the female, but I assume that the male usually initiates the duet, with the female chiming-in to fill out the song.
From a distance the duets sound like the work of just one singer, a bright melodic outburst of considerable beauty. Only when you get close can you hear the different positions of the two contributors and appreciate the close-knit quality of the duet.
There is really no comparison to this back in the United States. Sure, female Carolina Wrens and Brown-headed Cowbirds may chatter when their mate sings, but these are pale in comparison and the female outbursts are far from being musical. I have heard musical “call duets” between pairs of Great-crested Flycatchers, but these don’t hold a candle to the butcherbirds.
Australia seems full of such surprises. Next spring, I fully expect to find myself bored with my local soundscapes and longing to hear the exquisite melodies from Oz, from that magical land below the equator where birds sing like nowhere else on earth, their songs freshly sprinkled from the heavens.
Do I plan to come back to Australia for more recording? You betcha! C’mon, I still haven’t recorded the zen-whistling Pied Butcherbird, perhaps the greatest singer of all. That’s a magnet that will surely lure me back!
A true signature sound of Australia is the gurgling, bubbling melody of the Australian Magpie, a large black-and-white butcherbird of open country as well as forest edges and clearings. During our recent trip to New England National Park, I was very fortunate to record the contagious singing of a group, in farm country just outside the park:
Songs of Australian Magpies recorded around 7am, 27 October 2012, just outside New England National Park, New South Wales, Australia. © Lang Elliott (note: set against background recorded in dry forest near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia.)
The magpie’s musical song is a complex series of rich and varied gurgling whistles that lasts five or six seconds. It begins with soft low-pitched notes but quickly builds in volume and sometimes cascades downward at the end. The effect is quite pleasing, a real Australian “delicacy” for the ears.
Magpies live in family groups that defend territories. Males often begin singing in the wee hours of dawn, before other birds, although they usually continue to sound off well into the morning. The best performances happen in areas where they are dense, with the singing of one male eliciting the song of a neighbor, which may then elicit the song of another nearby male. This contagious singing pattern is quite evident in my recording, which involves at least four or five different males. Sometimes it sounds as if more than one male sounds off simultaneously from a single location. It’s also possible that females add notes when their mates sing, although I do not hear that happening in my recordings (duetting commonly occurs in related species such as the Grey Butcherbird).
A Soundscape Composition: The recording I’m presenting is actually a “composition,” in that I was compelled to place the songs against a different background to improve the listening experience. This is why I have called this post “Magpie Composition.”
Throughout my original field recording, there were several birds of an unknown species giving loud and obnoxious high-pitched (alarm?) calls almost continuously in the background. Perhaps these birds had a nest nearby and were disturbed by my presence. Whatever their cause, these calls pretty much wrecked the recording, at least from the perspective of human appreciation of the magpie songs. Fortunately, I was able to use advanced editing techniques to literally lift the magpie songs from their distracting background and then re-place them against a more pleasing backdrop from a similar dry sclerophyll forest.
I hope you like the result! While not an entirely authentic documention of the actual sound event, the recording does qualify as a “near-natural representation” of the magpie’s extraordinary musical talent … and it sounds WAY better than the raw field recording. In other words, the magpie songs are absolutely authentic and true to life (they have not been twisted, stretched or crunched), but their exact timing and the background ambience has been changed.
Fair enough?
p.s. Australian nature recordist Vicki Powys also tells me the following species occur in the background: Peaceful Dove (heard at the beginning), White-throated Treecreeper, Willie Wagtail, hint of Pied Butcherbird, Noisy Friarbird, Mistletoebird, Spiny-cheeked Honeyeater, a flycatcher species, Rufous Whistler, and Yellow-faced Honeyeater. Wow, Vicki’s got a great ear, doesn’t she!
ART CREDIT: The attractive painting of magpies is by Australian artist Katherine Castle. It is available in notecard form and as both paper and canvas prints. Check it out on her web site:
http://www.wildlifeart.com.au/2012/08/20/an-aussie-good-morning-magpies/
