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Northern Shoveler

Macaulay Library Year in Review
By Team Macaulay Library
2020 was a record-setting year for eBird, Merlin, the Macaulay Library, Birds of the World, and BirdCast, delivering a new era of scientific and conservation applications, innovative new birding tools, and much more. This year more than any other our community grew in exciting new ways. Millions of bird enthusiasts visited our websites and nearly…
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Equatorial Antpitta

Publications Using Macaulay Library Assets in 2020
By Kathi Borgmann
Acevedo-Charry, O., and W. Daza-Diaz (2020). First record of Rufous-thighed Kite Harpagus diodon in Colombia. Bull. B.O.C. 140:104–109. Adams, D. B., and D. M. Kitchen (2020). Model vs. playback experiments: The impact of sensory mode on predator-specific escape responses in saki monkeys. Ethology 00:1-13 Adsett, W. J., and L. Lieurance (2020). First breeding record, vocalisations…
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Yellow-breasted Chat

Recordings Powering New Research
By Kathi Borgmann
Movie stars have the Oscars and ornithologists, well, they have the North American Ornithological Conference (NAOC). While not quite as extravagant as the Oscars, for ornithologists, NAOC is the biggest event of the year. This year the event took place in August and looked a little different. Instead of thousands of ornithologists meeting in person…
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Macaulay Library the Muse: An Exploration of Bird Song in Art

Macaulay Library the Muse: An Exploration of Bird Song in Art
By Marie Chappell
Birds and their sounds have been a part of the arts for centuries. In 1924 Ottorino Respighi requested that a recording of a nightingale be played in his composition The Pines of Rome. Respighi’s artistic choice was controversial at the time; his contemporaries thought it more appropriate to use the orchestra to imitate bird song…
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Henslow's Sparrow

Winners of the Bird Song Challenge
By The Macaulay Library Team
This year we challenged you to rate at least 150 audio recordings in the archive or archive at least 50 recordings from April through June. More than 250 people ravenously rated audio recordings in the archive and helped to curate the audio collection and more than 7,000 people archived audio recordings during the contest period.  …
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White-throated Sparrow

White-throated Sparrows are changing their tune: your recordings at work for science
By Kathi Borgmann
The sweet song of the White-throated Sparrow drifts through forests and meadows all summer long across Canada, the northeastern U.S., and the northern Midwest. Field guides tell us that the song they sing sounds like Oh-sweet-canada-canada-canada or Old-Sam-Peabody-Peabody-Peabody.  But, Dr. Ken Otter, from the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues recently discovered that…
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Jerry Liguori, raptor expert, preserves his legacy in the Macaulay Library

Jerry Liguori, raptor expert, preserves his legacy in the Macaulay Library
By Kathi Borgmann
Jerry Liguori has dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge and passion for raptors with the world. Nobody knows raptors better than Liguori—he is the authority on North American hawks. Liguori has authored numerous articles and three authoritative, must-have books on raptor identification, as well as a ground-breaking video-focused raptor ID app. His books offer…
Read more Jerry Liguori, raptor expert, preserves his legacy in the Macaulay Library