On Saturday, I posted about the birds that reside in the trees near our Ithaca home. While writing the piece, I discovered the Cornell Macaulay Library archive of bird sounds, which helped me find which birds made what sounds. Last night, at dusk, I turned up the volume on my laptop speakers and played the cardinal songs over and over again to see what would happen. As one might have predicted, the cardinals emerged from the trees and swooped toward me, circled around, bobbed and weaved, and retreated. This continued until it struck me that I might be messing up their biorhythms or mating habits so I stopped, but not before I caught the confused male, above, on the telephone wire.
Tomorrow, I think I'll try crows, just for the fun of it.
-- sdh
