A sound recording of a Blue-headed Vireo was submitted last week, which marked the one millionth addition to the Macaulay Library (photo by Brad Imhoff).

Last week, Christopher McPherson recorded a singing Blue-headed Vireo and submitted his recording, which marked the one millionth audio recording added to the Macaulay Library. This incredible milestone was made possible by more than 20,000 recordists and birders who have shared their audio recordings of birds, mammals, amphibians, and insects with the Macaulay Library during the past 91 years. These contributions advance science and conservation, while providing birders with valuable information, and much more.

Recordings from the Macaulay Library have been used to discover new species, inform birders and biologists interested in specific bird sounds, and develop birding tools such as the Merlin Bird ID app. The Library includes sound recordings of more than 10,000 different species of birds, along with a wealth of species photographs and video clips.

Mike Webster, the director of the Macaulay Library noted “This huge number of recordings will allow us to provide accurate and complete audio guides for the birding community, help researchers use cutting edge “big data” approaches to understand the natural world around us, and it will enable powerful machine-learning approaches that can power conservation efforts. With this number of recordings we can enable scientific discovery aimed at questions that weren’t even conceivable a few short years ago.”

You can take a tour through a list of recordings from the Macaulay Library featuring some of the greatest hits from the first recording to recordings of extinct species; from bizarre sounds to musical sounds, and everything in between at https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/2021/04/27/one-million-audio-recordings-powering-science-conservation-and-birding-tools/ and to access all Macaulay Library recordings, photos, and videos see https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/