Do birds care about the level of noise in the environment? Do they prefer singing in a quiet place or do they keep on ‘rocking’ despite other individuals singing around? And what about the existence of a loud river\road\airport next to their territory? Are natural sounds conceived differently than anthropogenic noises from the perspective of a bird? Studying the effect of noise on birds in requires being the D.J. of natural sounds, in a way. Without sound manipulations, most sounds come with too many confounding effects (imagine a large river, a road or an airport) for studying the effect of the sounds on the organisms in the environment. Back in 2014 I read a paper (‘Phantom road’) by Christopher J. W. McClure, supervised by Prof. Jesse R. Barber, that changed the way I see the world - I realized how important the role of noise may be in shaping bird-communities and the behavior of individuals, even when exposed to this noise for a short time during migration.
To cut a long email correspondence short, in early June 2018 I found myself on an airplane on my way to Idaho, USA, to participate a huge field experiment conducted by the Barber Sensory Ecology Lab. In total, I spent incredible 5 weeks up and down the creeks just next to Craters of the Moon (a natural preserve in Idaho, not on the moon). During this internship I learned a lot about sound manipulations in the natural environment while recording both sound pressure levels and birds’ song. Additionally, I had an amazing opportunity to meet some of the best researchers in the field, work with great people and get to know the wildlife on the other side of the world (to me it felt almost as far as the moon itself). I now use the tools I acquired during my fieldwork almost daily, and the memories and adventures I acquired are life-changing and will always stay with me.
I wish to deeply thank The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research and the Office of the President of Ben Gurion University for funding this internship, Prof. Barber for the generous invitation, and the entire Barber Sensory Ecology Lab for kindly hosting me.
