The ability to identify birds by ear is crucially important to experienced birders. For years, gaining this ability has required a long, slow process of memorizing sounds. But the forthcoming Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds aims to change all that. In this talk, author Nathan Pieplow will introduce the concepts behind the field guide and teach expert skills in listening to bird sounds, reading spectrograms, and visualizing sounds. He will share some of the thousands of recordings he has made over more than a decade as a sound recordist, and the insights he has gained from his efforts to standardize the way we talk about, think about, and listen to bird sounds. Pieplow teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado, Boulder. An avid bird sound recordist, he is the author of the bird sound blog Earbirding.com as well as the upcoming Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds. He is an author of the Colorado Birding Trail, former board member of the Colorado Field Ornithologists, and former editor of the journal Colorado Birds.
