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From: horvath@granite.cr.bull.com (John Horvath)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Peterson's A Field Guide to Bird Songs
Message-ID: <1990Jul18.183147.1549@granite.cr.bull.com>
Date: 18 Jul 90 18:31:47 GMT
References: <1266@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
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Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Inc.
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In article <1266@idunno.Princeton.EDU> jklee@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (James Kin Wah Lee) writes:
>Does anyone happen to know if Peterson's "A Field Guide to
>Bird Songs" is or will be available on compact disc?  For
>that matter, how about any of the other "audible" field
>guides that are currently on tape or LP?


Yes, I have seen the Peterson Eastern guide to songs on CD at
the Nature Company stores and in a mailorder bookstore.
It was suppose to be available since sometime this past spring.
Earlier this year, there was some discussion in this group
about this and one person mentioned that HMinc was going to make available
a device for this CD that plugged into the remote switch of certain (Sony only)
CD players. It was a type of bar code reader that would be used
with a specially coded version of the field guide book, where you could
turn to a page, touch over the bar code and hear the vocalization.
Presumably, each species would be at a seperate track, which could be
directly addressed by the CD player. Sort of an evolution from
those "Audible Audubon" card players.

I've been waiting to see/hear this for myself so I haven't gotten
the CD by itself yet. I haven't seen anything else about this
anywhere. The manager of the stores that had the CD had never heard of
this CD remote control device either.

I've seen a few other bird song CDs at the Massachusetts Audubon
Society bookstore. None of the other ones were specific to any
existing fieldguide.


I've had the peterson LP's for the eastern guide for a few years. I've
tried to cram in the spring by listening to it, but found that I could
only listen to it for a few continuous minutes before losing attention.
I've used it more for reference, to hear what a specific mystery bird
sounds like.

Much better for learning bird songs, IMHO, is the Walton tapes
(also in the peterson series). In them, Dick Walton talks about
each bird song, what its about and easy ways to distinguish.
Rather than group the songs taxonimically, they are ordered in groups
of similar sounding (whistlers, namesayers, etc). There is also
a 'quiz' at the end to test your progress.  This spring,
I listened to the tapes on the way to work, for about 20 minutes
a day, for a couple of weeks. After that, I was pretty impressed
on my new "imprinting". For example, during a recent walk I easily
found a Warbling Vireo, which if I had relied on the available visual clues
would have been checked off as a LGJ (Little Gray Job).
I have the Eastern version and they have recently released a western
version. Both versions contain less than a hundred species, which
isn't everything but it is alot of detail.


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