Dan Mennill's Links Page


Online Bird Sound Resources

Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at Cornell University - The world's largest collection of recordings of animal sounds is now digital, and much of the collection is available for listening online. Download their visualization software and you can visualize sounds from the library as spectrograms on your computer.

Xeno Canto - A very impressive user-maintained database focusing on recordings of Neotropical birds, all available for listening online or for downloading.

Mangoverde - A virtual field guide, curated by William Hull, to the birds of the world with sound recordings, photographs, and video. 

Naturesongs - Doug Von Gausig's site features a diverse collection of bird songs from North America and Costa Rica.

Tony Phillips' Homepage - Tony has a library of bird songs from New York state as well as links to bird-related sites from all over the world. Check out the amazing song of the Uirapuru (Organ Wren) in the "World's Best Singers" section.



Sound Analysis Software


SYRINX by John Burt - This is the software we use most extensively in the Mennill Lab. It is a very versatile software package for visualizing and measuring sounds. I use Syrinx to annotate sounds and conduct basic time and frequency measurements. Syrinx is also a very effective tool for interactive playback and automated sound recognition.

Adobe Audition - A second important software tool in the Mennill Lab. This software was designed for manipulating music, but it proves useful for visualizing animal sounds.  In particular, Audition is very effective for frequency analysis, representing sounds as spectrograms, and spot filtering.  We use version 2.0, but there is a newer version 3.0 now available.

AviSoft SASLab - This is excellent commercial software for analyzing animal sounds.  It is very expensive but it is powerful. In the Mennill Lab, we use the automated sound measurement feautre and the spectrogram cross-correlation feature of AviSoft.

Raven - Raven is Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program's interactivesound analysis software, and the successor to Canary. There is a free version called Raven Lite, and a full vesrion called Raven Pro which is available for purchase. 

X-BAT - The eXtensible BioAcoustic Tool from Cornell's Bioacoustics Research Program is free open source software that can be run within MATLAB; it is very powerful for advanced sound analyses.



Radio Telemetry

Please see my radiotelemetry page for advice on how to radiotag small birds.

Holohil Systems Limited -  A dealer of radio transmitters in Ontario Canada. I have used Holohil's LB-50 radio transmitters to follow chickadees in 1999 and 2000. These receivers are lightweight (~0.5 grams) and transmit for a good distance through thick forest.

Wildlife Materials Inc -  A dealer of radio telemetry equipment. I use WMI's TRX 1000S receiver and a 3-element Yagi antenna.



Costa Rica and Santa Rosa National Park

The homepage for the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, an outstanding national park where I conduct much of my tropical research. Santa Rosa National Park is contained within the ACG.

Investigarodes ACG - A website for scientific researchers working in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste .

Save Our Songbirds - The website for John and Maureen Woodcock's banding project in the Santa Rosa mangrove forests.

Safari Iragaray - A tour company run by our good friend Eladio who can provide accomodation, tours, surf equipment, and an overall excellent experience in northeast Costa Rica.



My Friends and Colleagues

Biologists at the University of Windsor - Read about the dynamic research programs of my colleagues in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Windsor by following the Faculty and Staff link at our departmental homepage.

Stephanie Doucet - Stephanie is my wife and closest collaborator. Stephanie studies the evolution of bird plumage colouration and avian behaviour.

Laurene Ratcliffe - Laurene and I collaborate on a long-term study of animal communication and the  behavioural ecology of black-capped chickarees. Laurene studies the behavioural ecology of songbirds at Queen's University.

Sandy Vehrencamp - Sandy is a professor at Cornell University. Sandy studies the evolution of vocal communication in birds, and we have collaborated on some of my studies of rufous-and-white wrens.

Geoff Hill - Geoff is a professor at Auburn University. Geoff studies the evolution of plumage colour in birds.  Geoff and I have collaborated on searching for Ivory-billled Woodpeckers in Florida, and on a project on House Finch song.

Bob Montgomerie - Bob is a professor at Queen's University. Bob studies sexual selection.

Herman Mays - Herman is a postdoc at Auburn University. Herman is a molecular ecologist and studies songbird mating systems.

Ken Otter - Ken is a professor at University of Northern British Columbia. Ken studies the behavioural ecology of songbirds.

Rob Laird - Rob studies ants and plants. The feelings between the ants, the plants, and Rob are mutual(istic).

Matt Shawkey - Matt conducts research in the Hill Lab at Auburn University. Matt studies "small things on feathers".

Brandon Schamp - "The Schampster" studies community ecology of plants.

Michael Kasumovic - Mike studies spider mating behaviour at the University of Toronto. Click here to see Michael in action.