Nocmig - An Introduction

Like many other UK birders, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences forced me to find ways to maximise home-based birding jollies. Enter nocmig, the activity bearing a slightly awkward acronym which basically means recording night-time sounds, hopefully including those made by nocturnally migrating birds.

Of course, I have known of nocmig for years. Haven't we all? It is responsible for rewriting the UK status of Ortolan Bunting, with special emphasis on the heavily-populated Dorset flyway. So why had I never bothered with it before? One might also ask, why hadn't the other umpteen thousand birders who took it up in 2020 bothered with it before either? Well, I don't know about them, but I can tell you my reasons...

1. Equipment
It requires kit I didn't own, and didn't want to buy. Therefore I couldn't get involved, could I? End of story.

2. Inertia
Nocmig requires learning a load of new things. I am lazy, with an inbuilt resistance to hard work. And a long, steep learning curve strikes me as hard work. Therefore I couldn't get involved, could I? End of story.

3. The Listing Conundrum.
I have happily day-ticked, year-ticked, and even patch-ticked birds which I have heard but not seen, on condition that I have at some time in the past actually clapped eyes on the species. So I have no heard-only lifers. At least, none that I can think of. But honestly, I draw the line at counting a bird which I haven't even heard with my ears, a bird which has been digitally recorded in my absence. This is the scenario we're talking about with nocmig. How could you do that and still look other birders in the eye? Therefore I couldn't get involved, could I? End of story.

So, three massive show-stoppers. And yet here I am, nocmigging away like a good 'un. How did that happen? All three of the above will be addressed as we go...


Beginnings
So, basically nocmig had never appealed to me. And then in early April, birders across the land were hearing nocturnally-migrating Common Scoter from their gardens, balconies and open windows. I thought it would be pretty cool to get Common Scoter on the garden list, and began to sit out in the freezing cold each evening, initially hearing nothing remotely exciting. And then one night I heard a Moorhen! This was a big surprise, and I found myself unexpectedly chuffed. I even captured a Moorhen call on my phone one night. It was a recording of such dire quality that the next step was inevitable...

I bought a recorder. A proper one. A Zoom H4n Pro. And once that happens, there is only one way to go...

Nocmig kit

The recorder stays indoors, in the dry, while the cheap mic gets the weather. So far, so good. The mains adaptor is vital unless you want to use rechargeables or take out a loan.

Mic mount professionally bodged onto the cabin fascia board

When it comes to using that cheapo shotgun mic, one lesson I learned early on involves the microphone setting. Mine has a three-position switch - off, normal and tele. Somewhere I read that you should set your mic to 'tele' in order to minimise extraneous noises coming from below and from the side, ie, focusing it upwards. This might be perfect for hi-fidelity equipment, but do that with my bargain-basement item and the increase in electronic gain gives you background hiss like a pressure-cooker going off. Setting it at 'normal' works just fine, and I have the results to prove it. Incidentally, the mic takes a single AA battery. Mine has lasted three months and counting.

'Normal' setting does the job just fine.

So that's the equipment taken care of, and as you can see, show-stopper number one (above) is now dealt with.


Initial Progress
There is one piece of kit which I haven't mentioned - a memory card. You need this for your recorder. A night's sound file is large (3-400MB perhaps) and on my USB2-equipped laptop takes several minutes to upload. So I installed a 32GB card in the recorder, enough for many nights. All good, unless you want to take your recorder out in the field for occasional Blyth's Reed Warbler action, when you quickly discover how long it takes to fire up and be ready to record after switching it on. Around 40 seconds! So now I use a 2GB card, and the recorder is ready for use within 10 seconds of switching it on. I record in mp3 VBR (variable) format, and because a single night's recording will use roughly a quarter of the card's capacity I try to review it straight away.

Getting to grips with Audacity was a challenge. I probably use about .00001% of its functionality, which is ample for this nocmigger's needs, but it still took a while to get familiar with it. There were teething troubles, certainly. And then there is learning your way around Xeno Canto, and how best to utilise its resources to help you identify those peeps, squeaks, blips and squiggles.

But again, here we are just three months in, and I'm pretty happy with it all. So, inertia? The dreaded learning curve? Yes, show-stopper number two is also dealt with.


Ongoing...
Since starting nocmig I have missed very few nights, so must have tallied approximately a hundred now. If you check out the appendix below, you will see that this has resulted in a collection of some 175+ sound clips. Many of those relate to local (or local-ish) birds rather than migrants. In fact, perhaps as few as 50 or so are actual migrants. However, among their number are Night Heron, Stone-curlew, Quail and two Nightjars. Frankly, I find this astounding. In my wildest dreams I would not have imagined such quality flying over my garden here in W Dorset, and yet it has. By sitting outside after dark I have heard with my own ears Whimbrel, Barn Owl, Moorhen, Coot and one of the Nightjars, all happily added to my garden list. But many species remain digital entities only, which for me excludes them from that list. If I was the avid listing sort, perhaps I would keep a separate, special nocmig list, but I'm not that bothered. The important point is this: Each and every decent bird gives me a buzz. The fact that it exists only as a digital signal matters not a jot. And the really special birds have been genuinely exciting, far more so than I ever would have imagined.

Yes, the list thing doesn't matter. So that's show-stopper number three out of the way too.

Nocmig is simply different. It involves birds, of course, but unless you're outside, listening live alongside your recorder, it really isn't birding. Once I had made this distinction in my own mind, and separated nocmig from what I think of as birding, I saw it in a different light. A very favourable light.


Resources
I have already mentioned (and linked) Audacity and Xeno Canto, but there are other useful resources for the nascent nocmigger...
Nocmig - Tips for Recording Nocturnal Bird Migration   A superb website. What it says on the tin.
The Sound Approach - Nocturnal Flight Calls   Another mine of information.

I have gleaned bits and bobs from umpteen other sources also, but these two are in a league of their own.


Conclusion
The purpose of this post has been to document my initial steps into the world of nocmig. It would be nice to think it might encourage other birders to consider trying it, but whether it does or not, I can honestly say this: Nocmig has added enormously to the pleasure I get from birds and birding right now, and I wish I'd got into it years ago.


Appendix - List up to 20/7/2020 (since first - a Moorhen - on 14/4/2020)

Each call, or series of calls, counts as one occurence. Listed here are those I am confident about. I also have a large collection of possibles, probables and outright unknowns.

Barn Owl   55+ (there have been so many that I rarely retain them now)
Black-headed Gull   1
Canada Goose   1
Common Sandpiper   7
Common Scoter   1
Coot   7
Curlew   1
Dunlin   7
Grey Heron   1
Grey Plover   1
Little Grebe   1
Little Ringed Plover   2
Mallard   9
Moorhen   45
Night Heron   1
Nightjar   2
Oystercatcher   5
Quail   1
Redshank   1
Ringed Plover  4
Sandwich Tern   1
Spotted Flycatcher   1
Stone-curlew   1
Turnstone   1
Water Rail   5
Whimbrel   12
Wood Sandpiper   1

Total of at least 175 identified.