Recording Speech by Birds

Reasons for Recording

There are several reasons to record a bird's speech. Beyond photographs, an owner can identify his parrot by the bird's peculiar vocal inflection or by unusual words spoken by the bird. Humans are not good at discriminating avian speech, so a recording permits review of the bird's statements¹. Skeptical friends, who might otherwise disbelieve that a shy bird speaks as its owner claims, enjoy a program featuring a talking bird, as is evident from the number of people listening to parrot antics on the Internet.

Recording Your Bird's Speech

My audio experience can help readers to side-step many common difficulties in recording parrot speech. The use of digital recording devices is now common. As a general rule, buy good-quality, basic, equipment; exotic gear is unnecessary.

There are different types of equipment including compact, hand-held, units as well as recorders for home use, which include your computer. With hand held devices the operator has to be concerned with handling noises and how to position the device near where the parrot perches. Some small units have restricted fidelity, limited recording time, and include an inexpensive built-in microphone. Such a system is better than nothing and might be adequate for some bird keepers. (There are inexpensive non-digital recorders; for example, one can purchase a new or used compact cassette recorder inexpensively.)

Hand-held machines with attached microphones have to be placed close to the bird's cage or the perch from which the bird speaks. The operator must intrude upon the bird's space to activate the machine. Portable machines tend to record vibrations picked up by through the adjacent environment that mask the desired sounds, especially if the bird speaks softly. A very loud parrot can overload the recorder unless it has a built-in recording limiter and care is taken to position the machine a distance from a bird that yells.

A separate directional microphone yields improved results with recorders, especially portables that have a jack for an external microphone. A general-purpose cardioid microphone (one with a heart shaped sensing pattern) will diminish undesirable sounds from positions behind or to the side of the microphone. The user should experiment with the microphone position to optimize results.

Personal computers can record speech, and I recommend using a good microphone, such as the one described above, positioned near the bird to capture the sound. When set up with an accessory microphone, the computer can be positioned away from the subject. Some recording software for computers have volume-level limiting devices and sound-level equalizers that, when judiciously used, can help you make excellent recordings. Individuals who record on their computer can transfer their recordings to compact disc for storage.

Beyond a computer, there are many modestly priced recording devices that are suitable for capturing the sound of your parrot. A separate compact disc (CD) recorder does not tie up one's computer or computer memory for a library of relatively large sound files. I contemplated having difficulty manipulating a computer or the tiny buttons on a hand-sized recorder in a darkened room, so I purchased a home hi-fi compact disc recorder. This approach works well for me. The compact disc media are inexpensive and when "finalized" a CD cannot be accidentally re-recorded.

To employ a minimum amount of recording gear, especially when units must be moved to different locations, many recordists monitor sounds using headphones that plug into the recorder. Therefore, regardless of the type of unit you select, make sure the instrument features a headphone jack with an accompanying adjustable volume control. Concomitantly, a fatigue-free pair of stereophones is an essential item, and I cannot overemphasize the importance of owning accurate headphones for listening to recordings of your bird's speech. Distortion results from poorly-designed transducers, which include either a deficient microphone used to make the recording and/or an inadequate headset that does not reproduce the bird's words distinctly. The listening product you select should reproduce sounds with excellent fidelity and should be comfortable to wear for a minimum of twenty minutes.

Whatever equipment you choose, the important thing is to make recordings! You will be amazed by how much you can learn though recordings of a talking bird.

1 Dalton, Michael S. Another Kind of Mind: A Talking Bird Masters English Clearwater, FL: Arielle Publishing, 2007.

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