In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• How the Linda helped build the world’s bird sound library, and why it matters

• What it takes to record a clean bird vocalization in the wild and the even wilder stories behind the scenes

• The role of the Macaulay Library and what’s next for apps like Merlin

• 00:00 - Unveiling Secrets: The Spy's Cover

• 04:33 - The Journey of Recording Birds

• 09:06 - A Bird Watching Spy

• 13:12 - The Evolution of Bird Recording

• 19:55 - The Fascinating World of Bird Mimicry

• 22:42 - Field Recording Adventures

Timestamp Disclosure
These timestamps were generated using AI and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided for accessibility and reference purposes only and may not perfectly reflect the original audio.

Linda Macaulay (Excerpt)
So we were the guy who had been a British spy, and of course, bird watching was his cover. So we…

Dr. Scott Taylor
Oh, really?

Linda Macaulay
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Scott Taylor
That's so interesting. A bird watching spy.

Linda Macaulay
Well, you know, you go out at night with binoculars, you know, recording equipment.

Dr. Scott Taylor
It's official. I've reached the back in my day phase of my life. If I wanted to identify a bird when I was younger by sound, I couldn't pull out my phone.

I had to pull out a stack of CDs.

I started working as a naturalist right out of high school, first at McGregor Point Provincial park and then at Rondo in southern Ontario, where I grew up. I knew a lot about the natural world. Amphibians were easy spring flowers. Check that tree. Definitely a red maple.

But bird sounds always presented a challenge for me. And for a long time they were my kryptonite. And I wanted to be great at that job. But to do that, I had to study hard.

If you've ever tried to learn bird sounds, you know the pain. Birds don't just sound different between species, they sound different between individuals.

A robin in one forest might have a totally different vibe than a robin down the road. One might be singing, one might only be calling. So my strategy was very old school. Petersen's Field Guide to Birdsong, a literal box set of CDs.

I'd sit there for hours playing tracks on repeat and then head into the woods, hoping that the voices on the discs matched the voices in the trees. Slowly, very slowly, things started to click. And now fast forward to today. Okay, but who helped build the world's bird soundtrack?

If you want to know what's singing, you open Merlin, you hold up your phone and in seconds it tells you, oh, yeah, that's a western tanager. It honestly feels like magic, but behind that magic is a lot of sweat. Microphones travel, mosquito bites, patience notherbus.

And one incredibly dedicated pioneer.

Because behind the convenience of modern birding, the apps, the archives, the field guides, and that pinch me moment when a bird you've never seen suddenly has a name. There's a deep, global, decades long effort to actually record those voices. And one of the people who helped build that foundation is Linda McCauley.

Linda is one of those rare figures whose life work is so woven into the fabric of modern ornithology that you almost can't imagine the field without her. She's recorded birds all over the planet, traveling to over 50 countries, often in places where no high quality bird recordings had ever been made.

She's contributed over 6,000 recordings to science, representing more than 2,700 species of bird. And over 650 of those were the very first recordings ever archived for that species.

Her work is preserved in the McAuley Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The library is the world's largest archive of animal media, period.

I mean, over 71 million photographs, over 2.6 million audio recordings, hundreds of thousands of videos, some form of recording from about 96% of the world's bird species. If you can name a bird, there's a good chance the McAuley Library has its voice or its photo, maybe even both, maybe a video too.

And Linda helped make that possible. Her recordings have been used by conservationists, museums, researchers, and even to help identify new species.

She's the chair of the administrative board of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She's the vice chairman of the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural History. And she holds numerous other roles and accolades.

Much too long for us to list in a 30 minute episode, and yet she still carries the humility and joy of someone who just genuinely loves birds. How exactly did Linda find her way to recording birds? And what does it mean to build a permanent archive of the natural world today?

We'll chat with Linda to find out. Stay tuned. Thanks for joining us, Linda.

Linda Macaulay
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Of course. You know, I think when people think about the Macaulay Library, they think about Merlin, which we can talk about at some point.

But what I really wanted to start with was just learning more about why you started recording. You know, at this point You've contributed over 6,000 individual recordings to the library from all of these different bird species.

And it would be really great to hear a little bit about when this started and why you're so interested in it.

Linda Macaulay
I started bird watching in college with my husband and didn't know anything about sound. The Lab of Ornithology was running a trip to Kenya and Greg Budney, who was the curator, he didn't have enough batteries.

So my job became trading things to get him enough batteries. That was my introduction to sound recording. So then he said I had to go to Peru with Ted Parker.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Ted Parker was a legendary bird sound recordist and Neotropical ornithologist who helped build Cornell's Library of Natural Sounds, now the Macaulay Libra. He tragically passed away in a plane crash in 1993.

Linda Macaulay
And we took Ted's tour and Ted informed my husband and I we were not tour material and that I should go Buy a tape recorder and start doing this work. And so I did. And it was funny because I said, well, I can't do this. I don't know anything about sound.

But he said, if you hear the birds 100 times, you'll know it and you'll remember it. And what's funny is, when we're training Merlin for sound ID, we need between 100 and 150 recordings.

So it's kind of interesting because it's sort of the same number. The first trip I took was to Senegal, and I came back with a recording of Egyptian plovers doing this mating, which was fabulous.

And they were really excited because it was a rare bird. We had no recordings of it. And that was sort of the beginning of.

I can really make a contribution here if I go out and you record one bird at a time and every place you go, because you need the geographic variation and the song variation.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Let's listen to Linda's first of its kind recording of Egyptian plovers from Senegal from October 1989.

Linda Macaulay
Now we've got two of them on the mud bank, one of which is making this single beeping noise. A beep. That's it.

Dr. Scott Taylor
People might not think a single recording is really valuable, but you need that variation, especially as you're saying, you know, the Macaulay Library is used now to train Merlin, which is this amazing resource that has millions and millions of users at this point. But if you don't have that geographic variation, Merlin wouldn't work properly in various places.

And similarly, you can't learn that much about birds and their variation without taking recordings from multiple places. That's so cool about the plover display. Do you remember it? Can you describe the moment when you were recording it? How did that feel?

Did you know in the moment that this was special?

Linda Macaulay
I didn't know that it was such a rare bird and the recording was special, but watching it was special because I can literally remember sitting and there was a stream in front of us and an open area behind, and they were doing this display over the stream. It was really cool. Oh, cool. They just kept interacting as they. As they moved through the air.

They were fairly low and they were kind enough to land, so we got really good views as well. Perfect.

Dr. Scott Taylor
That was kind of a moment where you realized, oh, individual recordings matter. And these contributions that I'm making can matter for science and for understanding of birds. Is that one of your favorite stories from the field?

I mean, given that you've now been to so many different countries recording so many birds, like, do you Have a standout experience or is there just.

Linda Macaulay
Oh, I have a favorite. A laundry list. In Cote d', Ivoire, Ivory Coast. We were having a fantastic expedition and we were going.

We were moving west and we went to this mountainous area and our stop after that was supposed to be Thai forest. So we were a guy who had been a British spy, and of course, bird watching was his cover. So we.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Oh, really?

Linda Macaulay
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Scott Taylor
That's so interesting. A bird watching spy.

Linda Macaulay
Well, you know, you go out at night with binoculars, you know, recording equipment. We get to the hotel where we have a reservation, and as we're pulling in, we're seeing machine guns in the bushes.

And so this friend of ours said, when we get there to the front door, leave everything in the car and act like everything is normal. We go to the reception desk like everything's normal. And they say, well, we have some guests staying here, but they are leaving this afternoon.

So we suggest you go through and have lunch. And they go out bird watching and come back late. Okay.

Dr. Scott Taylor
So we walk, come back late.

Linda Macaulay
Okay, come back late. Right. So we go into the restaurant and there is this enormous table with every kind of weapon you can think of.

Charles Taylor is sitting there in a three piece suit.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Charles Taylor was a Liberian rebel leader and later President whose 1989 uprising helped ignite the Liberian civil war.

Linda Macaulay
His women are bringing food in for him. And we sit down in order, okay. But then two guys show up and they sit down at a table and they have an aluminum briefcase with them.

They order a cup of coffee and they leave and they leave the briefcase. And they were Americans and they had to be CIA.

So we realized that Charles Taylor, there were rumors that he was going to invade Liberia and Cote d' Ivoire was supporting him. So we figured his army had to have been in Thai Forest, which was our next stop. So we did not go there.

He did two weeks later invade and take over Liberia. And I think he's in jail now having been, you know, tried in a court at the Hague.

But things like being in Borneo on Mount Kinabalu and, you know, in those days you have your field guide and you've studied all the birds. And one of the target birds there is Whitehead's Trogon. And every book says voice unknown.

So we were climbing up the mountain and Dennis Young, who was very supportive of trying to get every recording we could, he said, you know, that something's calling. I don't know what that is. So I recorded it, I played it back. A Whitehead shogun came Straight in and sat there.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Oh, wow.

Linda Macaulay
And did not sing, but I knew it was his call. I had so much experience. You could tell by the way he came in. It's like, who's in my territory?

It took us about three and a half hours traipsing off the trails through the forest, but we finally got a male to sit up and give us a beautiful song. And it was the first in the world, and that was exciting.

Vocalizations of Whitehead's trogon. These were proven up. This bird is calling in response to the bird that we taped earlier. It was well seen in still calling.

This bird has never been taped before. No one knew its song. So these are the first recordings.

We have two different individuals, and the bird was definitely responsive to tape, as you can hear. Good one.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Yeah. That's amazing. To be the first in the world to capture and record anything really is fascinating.

But I know what you mean about, like, when you play the right bird song, if you're trying to, you know, for me, if I'm trying to attract a bird into a mist net, you know, when you nail it and you play that song in the territory, mail immediately arrives. You're like, yes, I got you. Oh, what an amazing story. The Macaulay Library has grown to basically the world's largest archive of animal media.

I think it's over 70 million photographs, over two and a half million audio recordings, 300,000 videos, and capturing 96% of all the world's birds, as far as we know how many birds there are, which is a topic of another episode. When did you know you wanted to be really involved with the library? Specifically?

The lab of O has been around for quite a while, but how did you come to understand how you wanted to be involved with that?

Linda Macaulay
When I was recording, I would go up to the lab three or four times a year, and I would copy all of my material into the library. And after a few years, the executive director of the lab at that time asked me if I would be on the board. And I've been on the board ever since.

It's just been phenomenal to live through and see the transformation of the lab across all areas that we work in. And it's been a great investment, not only of time and money, but to be part of this story.

And the other thing about the lab is it's always been free for anyone, anywhere in the world to use.

Dr. Scott Taylor
I think that's the amazing thing about Merlin. You know, when you bring it up and you. You talk about what it is, people wonder, oh, how much do I have to pay for that?

And that you can just download this and use it wherever you are and learn more about birds in this really amazing way is, is kind of mind blowing. And I mean, your, your time with the lab has been longer than mine was. You know, I started there in 2012 and I was there for four years.

And even since then, you know, the growth has kind of, kind of mind boggling. Like with Merlin, it was really launched in 2014. Right. And now we're only, you know, a little over a decade past that.

And the number of users and the breadth is pretty. I can only imagine it's just like mind boggling to be part of that and to witness it.

Linda Macaulay
Well, you know, I think that we've accomplished things that we never would have thought would be possible. And with Merlin, we made a critical decision to give it away for free. And what we get is your email address.

And then we hope that you'll get involved with some of the other things that we do. And, you know, it's Merlin the magician, because everyone can remember that, because not everybody knows Merlin is a bird.

Dr. Scott Taylor
I love it when they figure out that Merlin is a bird, though. I think for new folks to birding, they're, they, I think they, they understand the Merlin is the wizard piece.

And then they're like, oh, but wait, it's this cool falcon.

Linda Macaulay
Yeah. So we started small. I think when we first put it out, we maybe had 250 North American birds on it.

And we had our five questions, and every month we added more and more and more. So now we cover the whole world. And with sound, we're doing the same thing.

We started with some in the U.S. now we have most of the U.S. we have fair amount in Europe.

We're running sound recording workshops in other countries because people really want the feature and people on the ground in those countries, our partners are really going to go out and get the material that we need.

Dr. Scott Taylor
I don't know.

Amy Poehler has one of the most popular podcasts right now, an SNL comedian, and she was interviewing Ariana Grande, who uses Merlin, and was talking about how amazing Merlin is. Yeah.

So to see, like, it's gone all the way, you know, all over the world and is being used by people you wouldn't expect, I think is just really fascinating. But it's funny, too. There's all these, these TikTok or Instagram reels about like, oh, I'm a millennial.

And all of a sudden I know that's a yellow rumped warbler. You know, I think there's this, this group of people kind of really cluing in on birds.

Anyways, what are you most excited about in terms of the new features and the new ways that Merlin might grow? What do you think is most exciting?

Linda Macaulay
Well, I think that the more sort of social connections that we can make where you could have your own group of friends and share your Merlin sightings, you could. Well, there'll be more on the app, just that you can learn about any bird that comes up.

They'll keep adding things that will connect people together, not just you learning about that bird.

Dr. Scott Taylor
You know, you've recorded the same bird in different places across a country or across a region. How has that like, informed how you think about evolution or population variation or any of that?

Linda Macaulay
So an example is Mike Webster at the lab, works on redback fairy wrens and Australia. And when you look at the geographic variation, the northern population, the males have bright red backs.

It's a black bird with a fabulous red back and it has a dialect, a song. On the east coast, the males have orange backs and their song is different. And then there's a hybrid zone.

And so he's been doing these experiments and what he's found is the sound is more important. They really like the red back, but sound is what they use to decide who they're going to mate with.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Here's a recording of the eastern subspecies, the one with an orange back. Their song almost always has a few intro notes at the beginning compared to the western subspecies which has a red back.

Listen for the dat, dat, dat at the beginning of the song.

Linda Macaulay
There are other ways that our archive can be used and not just sound.

So for example, we had a student that was studying how a hummingbird molts and we have so many photos of that species that he picked up, he could show the whole molt literally feather by feather.

Dr. Scott Taylor
That's incredible. You know, there are some birds that we've talked kind of about dialects or at least that there's this geographic variation.

Have you recorded any birds that mimic other birds that were particularly exciting for you to record?

Linda Macaulay
Okay. It's really hard to be the superb wirebird in Australia. Nothing is a better mimic. Okay.

I've had males sit right in front of me and just go through 20, 30 different other species calls. And of course, really they're famous for doing things like a chainsaw, our car backfiring, our baby crying, which is pretty amazing.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Did you get to witness any of those kind of non bird mimic calls when you were recording lyrebirds?

Linda Macaulay
No, I have a nice clean all bird one. A few of them actually. It's vocalizations of superb lyrebird who is still calling.

Unknown Expedition Member
Shrike thrush, Golden Whistler, Kookaburra, White-Browed Scrubwren, Gray Butcherbird, Crimson Rosella. There's probably a couple in there that I didn't quite pick up on too.

Linda Macaulay
Wow, that's good. That's enough, thank you. Still singing. The bird moves its neck and it positions its mouth differently for each of these different calls.

Tends to open its mouth very widely to do some of these calls. And just an absolutely fantastic bird.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Perfect. There you go. You know, you weren't near any kind of construction zone or deforestation, which is probably a nicer place to be recording.

Linda Macaulay
No, but you know what, they're hard to see in the forest and we were in a park and I had one right on the side of a path where all these people were walking by and he's displaying and calling and ignoring everyone.

Dr. Scott Taylor
So of all the species that you've recorded, which one has made you wait the longest for a single recording?

Linda Macaulay
Some of them really make you wait a long time. Some of them you give up and some of them you get really lucky.

Sometimes you get a recording that's not great so you hope the next one will be better and so you just keep trying to upgrade. But I can't think of like just one example.

Dr. Scott Taylor
When you go out and record, what's the strangest thing you've had to do to get a clean field recording? Did you have to hide in a weird place or were you getting bit by a lot of insects or are there any memorable experiences there?

Linda Macaulay
Chiggers are not good. Leeches in Asia are really unfortunate.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Oh, yes.

Linda Macaulay
I have climbed a rock face to sit and record cormorants in the Galapagos. That was challenging.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Oh, that's awesome.

Linda Macaulay
I've laid flat in the mud. Yeah, you just have to do what your opportunity is when you're in the field. Yeah.

Dr. Scott Taylor
I had many, many blue footed boobies kind of vomit almost directly into my mouth when I was doing fieldwork because I needed the samples. And it can get kind of gross for people listening too. I don't know if everyone knows that in. Why are the leeches so bad?

Tell us a little bit about that. They're different than our North American leeches, right?

Linda Macaulay
Oh, yeah. No, it doesn't matter what you do. I think they just fall out of the sky and you don't feel them attach themselves to you.

You just see the blood, you know, coming down your arm, you always carry a small jackknife, so you can just scrape them off.

Dr. Scott Taylor
We have a segment on our show called that's BS or that's Bird Stuff where we give our guests a chance to debunk a myth that ruffles their feathers. So, Linda, what do you want to.

Linda Macaulay
Call BS on Everybody talks about seagulls and. Okay, there is not one gull that has the name seagull. You see them on the shore, but they're not seagulls.

Dr. Scott Taylor
That's an Excellent. That's B.S. i appreciate that so much. This has been really great. I've really enjoyed getting to chat with you. Thanks for taking the time.

Linda Macaulay
Well, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about birds, and I can't wait to watch your podcast.

Dr. Scott Taylor
Okay, so birds are dinosaurs, and around here we like our snacks. So we end each episode with a dinosaur nugget.

Today's dinosaur nugget is that behind the slick app on your phone that identifies what birds are singing or calling. Around you are hundreds to thousands of recordings that are training the algorithm.

And behind each of those recordings is a person, maybe covered in mud or in leeches or both, collecting and archiving the sounds of the natural world, along with some pretty wild stories. That's a wrap on this week's episode. Okay, but who helped build the world's bird soundtrack?

If you liked this episode, leave a comment, like and subscribe. We'll catch you next time. Byeee. Okay, But... Birds is hosted by Scott Taylor, with production and creative by Zach Karl.

Transcript Disclosure
This transcript was generated using AI-assisted transcription and may contain errors or omissions. Please refer to the audio or video episode for the most accurate representation.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But… Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows::

• Merlin (Taiga) audio contributed by George B. Reynard, ML4408

• Egyptian Plover audio contributed by Linda Macaulay, ML50441

• Whitehead’s Trogon audio contributed by Linda Macaulay, ML75416

• Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Myrtle) audio contributed by Wil Hershberger, ML85245

• Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Myrtle) video contributed by Eric Liner, ML472204

• Red-Backed Fairywren audio contributed by Tony Baylis, ML233591

• Superb Lyrebird audio contributed by Linda Macaulay, ML128376