Thursday, July 5, 2012

This you must hear: a Catharus guttatus aria

A Hermit Thrush, Catharus guttatus, peeks shyly from dense cover. What this speckle-bellied thrush lacks in visual pizzazz is more than compensated for by an awesome set of pipes.

The incomparable nature recordist Lang Elliott has produced a masterpiece of Hermit Thrush song, and you simply must listen to this work. Lang took an eighteen year old recording made by Ted Mack, and remastered it by slowing, stretching, stitching and compressing, and ended the melody with a flourish by a White-throated Sparrow (which was a background voice on the original recording).

Listen to Lang's Hermit Thrush aria RIGHT HERE. Keep in mind that complex tunesters such as thrushes and many other songbirds hear in ways that we don't, and Lang's remix may be far closer to what Hermit Thrushes hear, as compared to what our tin ears detect.

Check out Lang's and Wil Hershberger's always interesting blog HERE. You'll want to bookmark this bit of the Internet.

3 comments:

Mary Ann said...

So awesome...I thought it beautiful, but when .I started playing it, my cat Gypsy went insane, purring at the top of her lungs while simultaneously attacking and biting my arm before moving on to chomp on my head! Dang! She's still worked up over it!

KaHolly said...

Pretty cool, Jim!

Bob (in Powell) Burgett said...

Wow, truly amazing to hear a song from a bird of this genus slowed down/manipulated to amplify it in such wonderful detail. Thanks so much for the link.