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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY-AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ORNITHOLOGICAL 

 EXPEDITION MAKES A ROADSIDE STOP 



With the object of securing permanent records of the voices of vanishing species of birds and 

 filming their habits, the Cornell ornithologists left Ithaca, New York, the middle of February', 1935, 

 and traveled 15,000 miles, circling much of the United States in their quest. The truck at the left, 

 equipped for camping and photography, had a collapsible tower on its roof to bring the photographer 

 on a level with the tree tops ; the truck at the right was equipped for sound recording. The micro- 

 phone was supplemented by a large parabolic reflector shown between the trucks. 



help, and became so interested in the prob- 

 lem that we conceived the idea of making 

 a permanent record of the songs of all 

 North American birds. 



This was not the province of the movie 

 men, however, we were quickly assured. 

 They now had enough iilm of singing birds 

 for one release and that was as far as they 

 desired to go. We could buy the truck for 

 $30,000 and do it ourselves if we wished. 

 But we didn't have the funds. 



And so the problem rested until Albert 

 Brand entered the picture with a love of 

 birds in his heart and a desire to learn their 

 songs. He studied with us at Cornell for 

 a couple of years, saw the writing on the 

 wall, and decided his would be the problem 

 of filming the songs of North American 

 birds. Furthermore, he would record the 

 songs from the films on phonograph disks 

 so that they would be available to anyone 

 who wanted them. 



We little realized all the intricacies of the 

 problem when we first started assembling 

 the instruments necessary for this delicate 

 kind of recording. But our colleagues at 

 Cornell in the College of Engineering, Pro- 

 fessors W. C. Ballard and True IMcLean, 

 and Mr. Arthur Stallman, were very helpful. 



Soon, with their aid, we were embarked 

 on a project that was to prove as fascinat- 

 ing as it was difficult, and as time-consum- 

 ing as it was productive, and that finally 

 took us 15,000 miles with our sound truck 

 and cameras in 193S in an effort to record 

 the voices of certain birds that are threat- 

 ened with extinction. 



SEEKING THE RARE IVORY-BILLED 

 WOODPECKER 



By the middle of February we were fully 

 equipped and had started work in central 

 Florida. Mr. Paul Kellogg, instructor in 

 ornithology at Cornell and an expert in 



