BIRDCALLS! is a project by composer, violinist, audio maker, and birdwatcher David Schulman.
We are happy to work with places that would like to host a new BIRDCALLS! phone, with location-specific birdsongs. But for now there is just one, the original, in Takoma Park, MD.
Here's where you can find the original BIRDCALLS! phone, installed in 2016 at the corner of Flower and Erie Avenues in TKPK, and still squawking:
Electronics for the Takoma Park phone were hacked & fabricated by artist and engineer Branden Hall.
Field recordings of night herons, pileated woodpeckers, wood ducks and other local birds were provided by the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The human voices on the phone belong to local residents Bezu Dessie, Felix Contreras, Tom Huizenga, and (of course!) Marika Partridge.
And then there's there's the ROOSTER question...
Once in Takoma Park there lived a rooster named Roscoe. Being a chicken, he was an urban outlaw. But he evaded various uniformed pursuers, repeatedly. Roscoe attained the status of local legend, inspiring a new generation of urban chickens (now legit) within the City of Takoma Park. So BIRDCALLS! had a contest on our hometown radio station WOWD-LP to source local rooster audio for the phone — and the winning recordist was a local student, Siena Cimmino of Takoma Park. She recorded her rooster, St. Charles, at daybreak on the first day of school. Dial 5 to hear St. Charles crow ...
The bird sculpture that crowns our Takoma phone was created by Howard Connelly — seen here unloading his bird!