Question about Bird Song Frequencies (1 Viewer)

[RickStillBirding]

While searching for a list of bird song frequencies, I came across this statement:

“The Canada Goose has a fairly large vocal range, of 500-850 hz, and there is little discernible difference between the subspecies (Whitford 1998).”

Canada Goose Vocalizations |

pages.vassar.edu

I do not understand what the author calls a “fairly large vocal range” of 350 hz.

I checked some of the spectrograms of Canada Geese that I’ve recorded recently and the spectrogram shows a very wide range from about 500 to 15,000 hz. I have attached a screenshot of a spectrogram.

What am I not understanding about bird song frequencies?

 

[LittleBitOfBreadNoCheese]

Calls can have overtones like harmonics. Good account of all this in the RSPB book 'RSPB guide to birdsong' by Adrian Thomas. He uses Greylag Goose as one of his examples to explain this point: 'trumpet, full of widely spaced harmonics'. We tend to focus on the fundamental pitch of a complex sound which is usually the lowest frequency.

In his Canada Goose notes he shows two kinds of note the second of which is a bugling call with lots of harmonics up to about 5KHz.

 

[S_Man]

Yes, the calls are the lower bands between ~900 and 1200 Hz, then the rest is most likely the same sound vibrating at 1/2, 1/4, etc of the wave length, ie higher frequencies.

So maybe the calls of these geese have their base line between say 500 Hz and 1350Hz (I'm making that up), that would make a 850Hz range that the author is mentioning?

 

[RickStillBirding]

Calls can have overtones like harmonics. Good account of all this in the RSPB book 'RSPB guide to birdsong' by Adrian Thomas. He uses Greylag Goose as one of his examples to explain this point: 'trumpet, full of widely spaced harmonics'. We tend to focus on the fundamental pitch of a complex sound which is usually the lowest frequency.

In his Canada Goose notes he shows two kinds of note the second of which is a bugling call with lots of harmonics up to about 5KHz.

Thanks for suggesting "RSPB Guide to Birdsong"! I've ordered a copy and look forward to ready it.

 

[RickStillBirding]

Yes, the calls are the lower bands between ~900 and 1200 Hz, then the rest is most likely the same sound vibrating at 1/2, 1/4, etc of the wave length, ie higher frequencies.

So maybe the calls of these geese have their base line between say 500 Hz and 1350Hz (I'm making that up), that would make a 850Hz range that the author is mentioning?

They honk in chords!