On their outing last Friday with 2025 Shorebird Festival keynote speaker and “Wildlife DJ” Ben Mirin, attendees of his wildlife sound recording session did more than look for birds about Homer — they listened for them.

In his work, Mirin, an ethno-ornothologist, travels the world recording animal sounds and sampling their voices to create music that inspires conservation. On Friday, he brought some of his tools with him, including a variety of microphones, and conducted hands-on demonstrations with the workshop attendees. Participants were invited to bring their own sound recording equipment if they had any, even if that equipment was an audio recording app on their smartphone.

“The best microphone is the one that you have,” Mirin said in answer to a question about what kind of gear is the best quality. He said this was a piece of advice he often gave to mentees around the world that either had limited income, limited access to gear, or both.

Mirin led the workshoppers outside the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center for a sound walk, after demonstrating in the seminar room how to take good quality, annotated recordings of bird and nature sounds using smartphone apps such as Rode Rec, RecForgeII or RecorderHQ.

Mirin explained that, when recording audio on a smartphone, it was best to save the recording as a .WAV file rather than an mp3, because mp3 files are more compressed and don’t retain all the data from the original audio. Good audio recording techniques include, he said, getting close to the audio source; knowing where the microphone is on your phone; placing the phone on a surface rather than holding it, if possible; not moving or talking while recording; minimizing background noise; making long recordings; and making annotations.

Annotations, he demonstrated, can include the date, time and location of the recording, as well as notes on what is being recorded. The last is particularly useful, he said, when going through audio recordings later and looking for particular sounds with which to create soundscapes.

On crafting soundscapes, Mirin asked workshop attendees to consider, when recording audio, not only what they hear but how it makes them feel. He also asked them to pay attention to how the soundscape in nature changed as they moved through their environment.

Outside, participants split off into small groups and walked to different locations along the Beluga Slough boardwalk system and recorded audio. Results of their recordings included the sound of the wind or road traffic, footsteps on the boardwalk from other users, and birdcalls from species including bald eagles, ravens and crows, nuthatches and several species of sparrows.

Upon returning to the seminar room, each group shared their audio recordings and Mirin played them using audio processing software that also displayed spectrograms, or visual representations, of each recording. When asked what software he uses, he answered Izotope RX for processing audio for music production and Raven Pro, available through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for bird species identification.

According to festival coordinator Marcy Melville, 886 people registered for the 2025 Shorebird Festival. Approximately 140 species were spotted this year, including — notably — red knots, rusty blackbirds and bar-tailed godwits.

Lani Raymond with Kachemak Bay Birders further noted that a total of 27 shorebird species were sighted this year, including the “rare” red knots, which she said arrived in Homer prior to the festival’s start and were seen by birders every day.

“Hudsonian, marbled and bar-tailed godwits were other large, beautiful shorebirds present, also the black oystercatcher and red phalaropes everyone enjoys seeing each year,” she wrote in an email to Homer News Tuesday. “The average number of species seen at a festival is 130, so this was an exceptionally productive festival.”

Other interesting species seen this year included snow geese, ospreys, Caspian terns, pomarine and parasitic jaegers, and common eiders. Raymond also noted songbird species counted, including eight sparrow species, five warbler species and three swallow species. She also said there were 10 raptor species sighted.

Learn more about recording bird sounds with information from the Cornell Lab, available at www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-to-record-bird-sounds-with-your-smartphone-our-tips/.

For more information about the annual Shorebird Festival, visit kachemakshorebird.org.

Shorebird Festival attendees use a parabola microphone to capture audio of birds and other nature sounds during keynote speaker Dr. Ben Mirin’s wildlife sound recording session on Friday, May 9, 2025, at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Shorebird Festival attendees use a shotgun microphone to capture audio of birds and other nature sounds during keynote speaker Dr. Ben Mirin’s wildlife sound recording session on Friday, May 9, 2025, at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Shorebird Festival keynote speaker Dr. Ben Mirin (center) explains to workshop participants how to take annotated recordings of nature during his wildlife sound recording session on Friday, May 9, 2025, at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)