Greenwich resident Linda Macaulay has a passion for bird songs -- and for recording them.
For the last 23 years, Macaulay has recorded the songs of an astonishing 2,668 species of birds, nearly 30 percent of the 9,000 species known to exist worldwide. Her travels have taken her to the ends of the earth, to 50 countries outside the U.S. -- 26 of those in Africa -- where she captured those beautiful, rare and inaccessible bird sounds on tape.
Now she is being honored for her efforts.
On April 8, at the Paley Media Center in New York City, Macaulay will be celebrated for her contribution to science and conservation by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, an institution that she and her husband Bill Macaulay have played a major part in. Macaulay will receive the prestigious Arthur A. Allen Award, which recognizes contributions to ornithology by making it accessible to the general public
"I'm absolutely honored," says Macaulay. "It's a huge accomplishment. I couldn't have accomplished it without my colleagues at Cornell. The Cornell team is a family. They've taught me, encouraged me, and been with me every step of the way."
This is not the first honor from Cornell for Macaulay.
She has contributed her recordings -- of more than 100,00 bird sounds -- to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's Library of Sound, which has been renamed the Macaulay Library of Sound after her and her husband.
That library now holds the world's largest collection of natural sounds, encompassing 9,000 species of birds, mammals and insects. Those sounds are all available online (http://macaulaylibrary.org).
Macaulay called that online access an amazing accomplishment. "A person in any country can access a bird sound digitally for free," she says, "learn it and what to look for. It's like looking for a book -- you can go online and hear all the sounds, and it's happened very quickly. You don't have to be a scientist."
Yet scientists use the sounds too. They have been using the recorded bird songs as an invaluable tool to assess the biodiversity of a landscape. For example, "In third world countries where the World Bank is trying to identify which large blocks of land are worth conserving," Macaulay says, "if you have a base of knowledge of the sounds of birds, you would choose that block that is richest in bird sounds (to conserve)."
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Sitting in her home office on Hill Road with her official bird recording "bible" on her lap, Macaulay recalled learning about recording bird sounds from famed ornithologist Ted Parker.
Parker, who Macaulay called "the best birder in the field," had put the first recorder in her hand and told her "the only way to get good at hearing birds is in hearing them over and over - 200 times."
It's a lesson she took to heart when making her recordings.
Among the sounds she has captured, Macaulay claims at least 10 bird songs she alone has recorded, including the Whiteheads Trogon from Borneo, and the Rusted and Yellow Tanager from Argentina. At least 600 of her "first cuts" --the first time a paricular bird's sound has been recorded -- are in the Library of Sound.
Her most recent "first cuts" are from Syria and Bali. She found the rare and illusive small Iraq Babbler in Syria, along the Euphrates River. "It was near the Eiffel Bridge as in Eiffel Tower," she says. By playing bird song on her recorder, she received "response after response in every patch of reeds," then noted the description of its habitat and its behavior. "I don't just do sound, but sound and behavior," says Macaulay, who was a biology major at the University of Pennsylvania.
In Bali, she was in search of the endangered Bali Starling, what she calls "a big white bird." She was able to find a male singing in the wild on the west side of the island.
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Macaulay learned of her Arthur A. Allen award in December while attending a Lab board meeting in Ithaca, New York. On the agenda was a new Allen award winner to be announced.
She was unaware that it was her.
"I was completely surprised," she says, adding, "I was thrilled my husband was there to share it with me."
As for the future, the globetrotting Macaulay will likely head for New Zealand and Sri Lanka -- in search of some new "first cuts."
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Listeners can hear Linda Macaulay's sound recordings at the Bronx Zoo and in exhibits at the Museum of Natural History. The much talked about Maya Lin "Vanishing Cone" exhibit in San Francisco also features surround sounds of vanishing species from the Macaulay Library. And at her April 8 Arthur A. Allen Award ceremony, a special surround sound of Linda Macaulay's recordings will be presented by producer Alex Chadwick of NPR's Radio Expeditions.