You may remember my post on Aldo Leopold last November (my singular EcoIcon post to date). The run down is:
1. Aldo is one of my eco-idols, science heroes, and officially on my "good ole boys" list, to use the Okie phrasing. ("Home boy" to use my 90s high school slang, heh)
2. A land manager, forester, and professor, he was the founder of the land ethic.
3. He had a weekend escape - a little farm.
4. He wrote a beautiful zen-like book about observances from the farm called a Sand County Almanac.
Further recall the post on my favorite news sites, and you will know both why and how a certain news article pricked my ears. It not only pricked them... in fact, you might say, it tickled, educated, and delighted them all at once.
Wired Science recently ran an article describing how Aldo Leopold would record the bird songs from his little farm. (Double delight, there's a photo of the building) He described them in such detail that they were able to re-create what he heard, using the marvelous wonders of modern technology. Small wonder that bird populations and behavior changes over time - the article touches on the whys and the how these changes are reflected in the song patterns - so you can use the audio to hear the bird community at Mr. Leopold's farm as it was in 1940. A fantastic audio time machine.
The article on Wired has the audio file on the left, annotated with the species of birds on the seconds reading so you can learn to pick them out with your ears. So cool.
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