Unlikely Duets: Extremes of Bird Sound

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Unlikely Duets: Extremes of Bird Sound

Written by The World According to Sound

This is BirdNote.

The vocal range of birds is immense. To capture the breadth, we’ve composed two unlikely duets from species that never sing together in the wild.

First, a cassowary of Australia and a Brazilian hummingbird, the Black Jacobin [JACK-oh-bin].

[Southern Cassowary calls]

[Black Jacobin calls]

The Brazilian Hummingbird is the highest pitched bird; the cassowary, the lowest, reaching down to 24 hertz: the bottom of the human range of hearing.

[Southern Cassowary calls]

Now, the faint-voiced Grasshopper Sparrow and the White Bellbird.

[Grasshopper Sparrow song]

[White Bellbird calls]

The White Bellbird has the loudest call in the world at 125 decibels.

[White Bellbird call]

I'm Sam Harnett for The World According to Sound. We're teaming up with BirdNote to make an immersive, 70-minute, virtual event about the sound of birds. More info at BirdNote.org.

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Produced by Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff of The World According to Sound
Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Black Jacobin recorded by, Grasshopper Sparrow ML249307811 recorded by J. McGowan, and White Bellbird ML62820 recorded by P Schwartz. Southern Cassowary calls recorded and provided by Andrew Mack.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote      January 2022      Narrator: Sam Harnett

ID# wats-04-2022-01-28        wats-04