Pages

Monday 15 June 2020

Sound Thinking

On the morning of April 14th I sat down to analyse my first nocmig recording, using the amazing Audacity. My night's tally? One cat. It was not an auspicious beginning. Yet here we are, two months on, and wow! A Stone-curlew in the early hours of April 22nd was the final nail in the coffin of any reservations I might have had as to the wisdom of getting involved in this nocmig nonsense. Also Nightjar, twice. In the early days I would save every single interesting bird, and mostly still do. However, my collection of Barn Owl calls was growing so rapidly that I only keep exceptionally good ones now. Things are very slow at the moment though, and the list of what I have saved since the end of May is rather short. Four Moorhens, two nights of probable Little Egret, and...er...oh yes, Night Heron! Also these two...

First, a terrific Water Rail. I've recorded the species twice before, but just the short call each time. This example is a lot more colourful. Listening to it, I try and visualise the bird wafting around overhead somewhere in the dark, doing this...



And last night a Common Sandpiper flew over and called twice. In reality the calls were 26 seconds apart, so I've truncated things. What is a Common Sand doing down here so late? Or is it so early? Does this bird signal the tail end of spring, or the start of autumn?



And finally, a Barn Owl compilation, just because. All these were recorded just before 01:00 on June 9th. The usual Barn Owl shriek lasts about one second, and is just that - a fuzzy, white-noise shriek, like the first example in this lot. At least two birds are involved in this medley, and they are putting on a bit more of a show than usual...



Some nights I get nothing worth clipping and saving, but it doesn't put me off. I find the whole enterprise absolutely fascinating. A few blank nights won't make me give up. Basically, I'm hooked.


Today is June 15th. Heading out early this morning I expected nothing, and was not disappointed. That said, there's usually something to make an outing worthwhile. Today it was an Acrocephalus warbler. Not a scarce one, but an unusually showy one. A stream runs in to the sea at Freshwater Beach, and its lower reaches are thinly lined with reeds, in which you can often hear one or two Reed Warblers. Just after 06:00 this morning I actually saw one...

The very first rays of morning sun. There's still dew on the reeds.




Because of the recent Beer Head Blyth's Reed Warbler I now have a little folder of ID stuff tucked away in a recently dusted part of my brain, and could right now pull it out and tell you exactly why these photos depict a Reed Warbler, not a Marsh or Blyth's Reed. Not long ago, I couldn't. Sobering.

6 comments:

  1. Gav, there sounds like there's a Curlew mixed in with the Barn Owl. Such a fluty ring to the recording.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amazing sound, isn't it? Between the last call and the end of the video there's another of those in the background, very faint. So faint that I didn't notice it initially, and have almost cut it off. It is just noticeable on the spectrogram, and is what made me realise that at least two birds were involved with this lot.

      Delete
  2. Hi Gavin. This is good to read and leaves me jealous of your barn owls- still not a single owl for me since starting in early May! Had my first common sandpiper last night & water rails seem very active.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks James, it's interesting to know that you had Common Sand on Sunday night too. The Barn Owl action I get here was such a surprise when I first started nocmig recordings, but there is farmland quite close by. Also some modest woodland for Tawny Owls, so I'm very fortunate there. Still, if it hadn't been for nocmig I would not have heard juv Tawny Owls begging, and would not have been able to confirm breeding. There's more to this nocmig than meets the eye! 😊

      Delete
  3. Hi Gavin, I loved your Marsh vs Blyth's ID comparison post. The only thing that was missing from it was how Reed compared to the two. Might you consider doing a follow-up post with a breakdown of the salient Reed features?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment Adam, much appreciated. And I'm glad the Marsh vs Blyth's Reed post was useful, that's good to hear. The post was written in the context of sorting out which of the two you were dealing with if faced with a singing male in spring. Of course, with a regular Reed Warbler's song being so distinctive, the potential for confusion doesn't arise.

      To be frank, I sometimes feel a bit unqualified to offer ID tips. I'm an okay birder, but tend only to learn tricky stuff as and when I need to; I'm certainly not as proactive as I'd like to be. In the Marsh/Blyth's Reed case I was not prepared, but I'm happy to pass on what I learned 'after the fact' because I feel it might be relevant in June, and useful to others. Beyond that I probably shouldn't go...

      Delete