On this occasion we had the honour of hosting two guest speakers from the USA: Don Kroodsma is one of the world’s leading researchers into birdsong and avian vocal behaviour, and Greg Budney is the head curator at the Macaulay Library of Wildlife Sound at Cornell University.

For me, meeting with Don Kroodsma was very rewarding. As professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and having spent the last 40 years researching birdsong in the field, he has some very interesting things to say about how and why birds sing.

Don has recently published a book entitled ‘The Singing Life of Birds’, and I took the opportunity of reading it around camp at Lawn Hill (a good use of shady trees on hot afternoons).

At the gathering, I took Don aside for an hour and sat him down under another of those shady trees for a discussion about the science and aesthetics of listening to birdsong. As we talked, the birds sung around us. You can listen to what Don has to say about our feathered vocalists by downloading our discussion here (mp3 file, size 63Mb, right click & save to desktop).

Don’s ‘The Singing Life of Birds’ is a fascinating and delightful read. It is poetic, thoughtful and full of insights. We bought a copy from the splendid Andrew Isles Natural History Bookshop in Melbourne (AU$50), but it is also available via Amazon.com. The book includes an audio CD to accompany the text, and I guarantee that after reading what Don has to say, you will never listen to a bird singing in quite the same way again.

A related book that I also read on the road, and can thoroughly recommend, is Don Stap’s ‘Birdsong’. It is writen from the perspective of a non-expert, as he accompanies some of the world’s leading researchers (including Don Kroodsma) in their field work. It is as much a book about the people who study birdsong as it is about the birds themsleves. Giving a good overview of current knowledge of birdsong, it is an easy read, and makes a good prelude to delving into Don’s work. (It is also available via Andrew Isles, or online sellers such as Amazon, where I see you can buy both books as a special deal)