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Enter Archive

(1st ed. - May 2018)

Archive Overview
This is a cloud archive of 27,858 avian nocturnal flight calls (mostly warblers & sparrows) recorded in spring 2016 from seven acoustic monitoring stations in the Towns of Somerset & Yates, NY (Niagara & Orleans Counties, NY; see map). The archive is implemented in a limited functionality version of the open-source audio/spectrogram database program called Vesper. The archive can be viewed with Windows PCs using recent versions of Google Chrome (recommended), Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge browsers, but not Internet Explorer. It can be viewed via macOS with Google Chrome (recommended) or Mozilla Firefox browsers, but not Safari (Safari does not yet support some Web Audio API functionality that Vesper uses, but presumably will at some point.)

When first entering the archive, one sees a calendar of 2016 dates with orange circles on the nights with call data for the first of the seven acoustic stations. Nights span two dates and the date listed is that beginning at 00:00 hours (e.g., the night spanning 6-7 May is listed in the archive as 7 May). The size of the orange circle reflects the number of calls for that night; larger circles indicate more calls. Clicking on one of the orange circles in the calendar takes you to a call album for the circle's night, which in Vesper is termed a "clip album". The album contains a spectrogram for each call - a visual representation of the sound with time along the horizontal axis, frequency (or pitch, roughly) along the vertical axis, and the power at a particular time and frequency indicated as darkness. To listen to a call, move the mouse over its spectrogram and click the orange play button that appears in the spectrogram.

A call album is organized into pages, with each page containing the spectrograms of the next batch of calls in the night. One can navigate through the pages of a call album using the two small arrow buttons to the right of the album's title, or by typing the "<" and ">" characters on the keyboard. One can also navigate to a particular page of a call album via the "Go To Page..." item of the dropdown menu, which can be displayed by clicking on the rightmost button to the right of the album title. Below the call album title is a plot that shows the timing of call occurrences in the call album through the night (darkening gray tones equal civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight respectively; dark is night). The numbers labeling the plot are hours of the night, and the plot contains a vertical mark for each clip. The marks for the calls of the current page are magenta, and the marks of other clips are orange. One can navigate among the pages of a call album by clicking on the plot. As one moves the mouse over the plot the marks for the calls of the page under the mouse turn green; clicking the mouse leads to that page. To toggle the spectrogram labels of a call album, type the "~" (tilde) key on the keyboard.

In the calendar displays, the station and classification can be changed by clicking on the small filter button to the right of the page title. This brings up a "Filter Clips" modal that includes "Station/mic" for specifying the station and "Classification" for specifying the species classification. (It also includes a "Detector" option, but since the archive currently contains calls for only one detector there is only one choice.)

The "Classification" option of the "Filter Clips" modal contains the following species classes:
    American Redstart   
    American Tree Sparrow   
    Black-and-white Warbler   
    Black-throated Blue Warbler   
    Canada Warbler   
    Clay-colored Sparrow   
    Cedar Waxwing
    Chipping Sparrow
    Cape May Warbler
    Common Yellowthroat
    Chestnut-sided Warbler
    Field Sparrow
    Golden-crowned Kinglet
    Grasshopper Sparrow
    Indigo Bunting
    Mourning Warbler
    Northern Parula
    Northern Waterthrush
    Nelson's Sparrow
    Ovenbird
    Palm Warbler
    Pine Warbler
    Savannah Sparrow
    Swamp Sparrow or Lincoln's Sparrow
    White-crowned Sparrow
    Wilson's Warbler
    White-throated Sparrow
    Yellow-rumped Warbler

The following classification items specify call types produced by more than two bird species:
    Double Up - Black-throated Green Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler   
    Zeep - Yellow Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler, Magnolia Warbler

In addition, note the two other classifications:
    Weak - when a call is too weak to classify to species
    Unknown - when a relatively loud call could not confidently be put in a species class

The "Call*" item specifies all calls, rather than those of a particular species.

The archive user interface also offers a second type of call album, called a station call ("clip") album. This type of call album differs from a night call album by showing all of the calls of a particular station and classification, instead of just the calls of a particular station and classification for one night. One can view a station call album by selecting the "Clip Album" item from the "View" dropdown, located of the left side of the black navbar of every page. Usage of a station call album is just like usage of a night call album with one exception - in a station call album the pulldown to the right of the album title contains an extra "Filter Clips" item that allows one specify the station and classification of the album.