HUNTING WITH A MICROPHONE THE VOICES 

 OF VANISHING BIRDS 



By Arthur A. Allen 



Professor of Ornithology, Cornell University 

 With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author 



y%LMOST within the memory of men 

 /-\ still living, four species of North 

 1. JL American birds have become ex- 

 tinct. In our museums will be found the 

 dried skins or mounted specimens of the 

 great auk, the Labrador duck, the pas- 

 senger pigeon, and the heath hen. The 

 Carolina parakeet seems about to follow 

 them.* 



Until only a few years ago, the tooting 

 of the heath hen could be heard each spring 

 on the island of Martha's Vineyard, but the 

 thought of preserving its voice, in addition 

 to its photographic image and stuffed effigy, 

 never entered anyone's mind. 



Yet there are many Nature lovers, inter- 

 ested in the living bird as well as in its 

 plumage and classification, who would like 

 to know what sounds it made when it in- 

 flated the tiny balloons on the sides of its 

 neck and stamped its feet and flirted its tail. 



They would like to know what sounds 

 were made by the millions of passenger 

 pigeons described by Audubon and Wilson 

 as darkening the sky for hours at a time. 

 They would like to listen to the call of 

 the Labrador duck and the other species 

 that are gone forever. 



And today there are other birds, still liv- 

 ing, which seem unable to compete with the 

 march of civilization and which our chil- 

 dren may know only as museum specimens. 

 Should not their voices be preserved before 

 it is too late? 



As we were talking this over one winter 

 evening when I was beginning to plan a 

 sabbatical leave from the University, my 

 good friend Albert R. Brand suggested that 



* These ill-fated species have been described 

 in detail in previous issues of The National Geo- 

 graphic Magazine, The Passenger Pigeon and 

 the Heath Hen (under Prairie Chicken) were in- 

 cluded in "Game Birds of Prairie, Forest, and 

 Tundra," by Alexander Wetmore, in The Magazine 

 for October, 1936; the Carolina Parakeet in "Par- 

 rots, Kingfishers, and Flycatchers," by Dr. Wet- 

 more, June, 1936; the Great Auk in "Birds of the 

 Northern Seas," by Dr. Wetmore, January, 1936; 

 and the Labrador Duck in "Far-Flying Wild Fowl 

 and Their Foes," by Maj. Allan Brooks, October, 

 1934. 



a worthwhile undertaking would be the all- 

 time preservation of the voices of vanishing 

 birds. 



The idea grew, and soon we had a hunt- 

 ing e-xpedition well in mind — an expedition 

 which would leave guns at home and would 

 "shoot'' the birds with cameras, micro- 

 phones, and binoculars: its object: speci- 

 mens of bird voices preserved on film, with 

 such photographs, motion pictures, and 

 field observations as would elucidate the 

 habits and appearance of the living birds 

 and determine better methods for their 

 conservation. 



The American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, of which Mr. Brand is an Associate 

 in Ornithology, approved of the project; 

 the National Association of Audubon So- 

 cieties gave us its blessing: Mr. Duncan 

 Read loaned us additional motion-picture 

 cameras; and the Brand-Cornell Univer- 

 sity-American Museum of Natural History 

 Ornithological Expedition was born. 



BIRD VOCALISTS PROVE TEMPERAMENTAL 



We had already had opportunity to learn 

 something of the work we were undertak- 

 ing. Not long after the first sound pictures 

 appeared on the screen about ten years 

 ago, an attempt was made by a well-known 

 motion picture company to obtain a film 

 release of singing birds as a demonstration 

 of the quality of its sound-recording 

 cameras. 



It is one thing, however, to invite an 

 opera singer to step before the microphone 

 and quite another to order a wild bird to 

 do the same thing. For nearly two weeks 

 two of their best operators, equipped with 

 a sound truck, struggled with the problem, 

 but just as they got their cameras and 

 microphones into action the singing birds 

 flew away. 



Finally, patience exhausted, they came to 

 our Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell 

 for help, thinking that our knowledge of 

 birds might supplement their knowledge of 

 sound recording with desirable results. To 

 make a long story short, we were able to 



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