Macaulay Recording Workshop

A few weeks ago Nathan Pieplow explained on his excellent blog Earbirding how he got into recording bird songs. In his post he also put out a call to arms as it were to his readers to go out and get more involved in recording as a means of making real contributions to the science of ornithology, and a couple weeks later he provided a short, off-the-cuff sample of the myriad of topics and areas of research that are still essentially wide open to study.

I took the posting very seriously, and almost personally. If you know me you know that I've been immersing myself the past few years in bird song, studying it continuously and spending more than just a few dollars on CDs and a few hours organizing my iTunes library to do my own systematic study of bird vocalizations. And I definitely have contemplated getting into recording. Every time I did though I tended to dismiss it however, thinking that people like Nathan and Andrew Spencer and the dozens of other regular contributors to xeno-canto.org basically have the situation covered, and that I'm just a little too late to the game to contribute all that much. I'd enjoy it as a personal pastime, sure, but I wasn't sure I could rationalize the initial expenditure on recording gear, and then later the other time and money expenditure on 'support infrastructure' needed to do justice to the pursuit. Think of it this way -- when you buy a nice new digital camera, say a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, you are effectively buying more than just the camera itself. You are also buying into batteries, memory cards, a laptop, a storage system, maybe a website subscription for posting your photos, basically all the things such a camera needs if you are going to use it on a regular basis. I just figured that going into sound recording would entail a similar approach, and although that itself doesn't scare me, it seemed like that wasn't something I should distract myself with right now as I am trying to finish my ongoing book project.

Well, I finally changed my mind, and have since reserved a spot in this year's Macaulay Library Recording Workshop out in the northern Sierra Nevada's in June. I didn't come to the decision easily, but I figured that it's an excellent deal, and if I ever do want to get into recording on a larger scale, I shouldn't just assume that this workshop will be around forever, at least not with this level of accessibility and affordability. Also, I've been toying with the idea of going back to graduate school (again), this time in something ornithological; if I ever do that, I'm definitely going to do something with bird vocalizations, ethology and field work. It'd be silly for me to pass up this opportunity to get some hands-on training and explanation from experts. Greg Budney helps teach the class, and he's a celebrity in the admittedly small circle of bird sound people.

Thanks Nathan for your encouraging words on your blog, and showing someone like me the way. I'm really excited about this class!