Happy Owl-oween

In honor of one of my favorite holidays, this post will take a brief look at some interesting acoustic aspects of....

Owls!

Scary owl! Grrr...ok probably more cute than scary
so you'll just have to use your imagination. 

Tweet Tweet

The end has come...
I've finally joined Twitter. You can follow me at @ProcrastinatehD

Warships, Whales and Lots and Lots of Duct Tape

How real scientists are working to save the whales.

Owning to the overwhelming popularity of the post I did on birds, I was going to do another avian post. However, two weeks ago I was given the opportunity to take part in some really nifty research taking place on the west coast of Scotland. I'm so excited to share it with you all so, sadly, the birds will have to wait.

Visual and Acoustic Surveys-Photo credit Simone Prentice

Spectrogram vs Sonogram

Hint: If you want to be vague, the answer is "sonogram".

As anyone who has the (mis)fortune to know me personally has probably discovered, I like to argue about science as a means to get the best answer to a question. This was instilled in me during my first first college level science class at the University of Maine at Machias-by a professor  that both scared the crap out of me and made sure we knew that every topic in science is evolving, our knowledge never stagnates-and that's what is exciting about it! Nobody has all the answers but we all have a small piece and together, through trial and error, we can come up with solutions to fabulously complex questions. Incidentally this is the same professor who, on my first day of college, I pointed out was incorrect about the fact that salt water boils at a lower temperature than fresh (it doesn't). He called me in front of the class during the next lecture to correct his mistake, and embarrass me at the same time (had that one coming).

So, *ahem* a few years later, it appears that I have failed to learn from my earlier experiences, as the other day I got in an argument with a P.I. (principle investigator, or slightly better paid and more respected researcher) about acoustics terminology. He was speaking with his students about creating "sonograms" of bird calls.

"Sonogram"