![]() Richard Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University who was not involved in the study, says it’s impressive that the researchers were actually able to measure the bellbird's decibel level. The two trekked into the mountains last December and again this February with calibrated sound level meters to record the amplitude of White Bellbird and Screaming Piha calls, which they adjusted for noise and distance to allow for comparison. Curious to find out how loud the bird actually is, he contacted Jeff Podos, a bioacoustician at University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They give out these loud ringing sounds that sound like someone banging on metal, like a blacksmith.”Ĭohn-Haft became familiar with the sound through his expeditions in the mountains of the Brazilian Amazon. “We could hear them all over the place, they’re kind of the soundtrack of these forests,” says Mario Cohn-Haft, one of the study’s authors and an ornithologist at Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia. Its short, booming, two-part call is three times the sound pressure level-a measure of sound intensity-of the Screaming Piha’s call, the previous record-holder. In fact, the White Bellbird has the loudest bird call ever documented, according to a paper published today in the journal Current Biology. Although it’s only about the size of a pigeon, this South American bird has a call louder than the howl of a howler monkey, and comparable to the hammering of a pile driver. But if your alarm clock was the male White Bellbird’s mating call, it would be more like waking up to the blaring of a fire alarm. Birdsong can be the perfect wake-up call for mellow mornings, with soft chirps and gentle warbles that ease you out of a deep slumber.
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