Researcher and software author
John Burt
Here you will find information about my research and the software I am developing.
I study animal communication and bioacoustics. My primary interest is bird song learning, and the use of song in complex signalling strategies. I am currently involved with a lab based song sparrow song tutoring project at the University of Washington with Mike Beecher. Recently I studied the song behavior of banded wrens in conjunction with Sandy Vehrencamp at Cornell University. I live in Seattle, Washington.
Research
The song sparrow work asks how young birds choose the songs they learn, and how shared songs shape communication between neighboring males. The banded wren work uses interactive playback to test how complex song is used in territorial neighborhoods.
Both projects depend on tools that can record, display, and measure sound in the field without slowing down the experiment. That practical need led to Syrinx, a Windows program for scientific sound recording, playback, editing, and analysis.
Project pages
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Mike Beecher's home page
Information about the song learning and communication research I am conducting in that laboratory.
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Banded Wren Project
A neotropical songbird project studying the function of song in territorial neighborhoods.
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Microphone array recording system
The array I developed to record banded wrens across a neighborhood.
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Syrinx
A Windows program for scientific sound recording, playback, editing, and analysis.
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A directional speaker
A playback speaker I designed for interactive experiments with song sparrows.
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Sim Songbird
A program that creates a simulated neighborhood of songbirds to study how song sharing develops.
Hobby pages
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Model airplanes
My most obsessive hobby. Details and photographs of some of my models, along with notes on early aerial video flights.