This is a re-work of a picture I did in 2014. I liked the original concept I had of merging a sonogram with starlings calling from utility lines, but I was never satisfied with how I executed it.
The scenery of the picture is the sonogram graph. I wanted to highlight the starling's ability to imitate other birds, so the data points of the sonogram are shown as abstractions of birds I've heard starlings imitate.
Sonograms aren't usually depicted in field guides. But the Golden Guide "Birds of North America" does include sonograms for many birds. When I first started birding I found these sonograms to be more helpful in describing bird calls than the textual descriptions offered in most field guides. I could glean a sense of a call's timing, pitch range and variation from the sonogram's blotchy plots and roughly compare this to what I heard in the field. This though, was before recordings of bird songs were readily available online or mobile devices (cause they didn't exist!).
Robbins, Chandler S, Bruun, Bertel, Zim, Herbert S and illustrated by Singer, Arthur. A Guide to Field Identification Birds of North America. New York; Golden Press, 1966.