Listening in the Field

The transformation of sound recording into a scientific technique in the study of birdsong, as biologists turned wildlife sounds into scientific objects.

Scientific observation and representation tend to be seen as exclusively visual affairs. But scientists have often drawn on sensory experiences other than the visual. Since the end of the nineteenth century, biologists have used a variety of techniques to register wildlife sounds. In this book, Joeri Bruyninckx describes the evolutio…