A Small Triumph of Sound

I've been quite consistent in getting out early recently. At Cogden right now this is a good ploy, because apart from a small number of dog walkers the place is pretty much deserted for a couple of hours after first light. It truly is a privilege to have such a beautiful spot virtually to yourself. Much of the coast here is quiet, picturesque and birdy. And good for the soul I'm sure.

Autumn migration is shifting up a gear. Being mid-September it is noticeable how many more birds are overhead now. This morning was brilliant. Lots of vismig passage, mostly House Martins and Meadow Pipits, with a smattering of other players. To be honest I was so intent on bashing the bushes that I failed to fully appreciate the scale of the movement, but literally thousands of House Martins were heading into the stiff ENE breeze, many lingering for a while in spectacular swarms. I made some effort to count Meadow Pipits for the first 15 minutes or so, but stopped at 150, knowing I was already missing quite a few more distant birds. I haven't done any real 'vismigging' for years now, and cannot motivate myself to count properly otherwise; I see little point in recording 477 Meadow Pipits from a half-hearted bit of skywatching when I know the true figure would have been double or triple that with a concentrated effort. Instead I just enjoy the spectacle and hope that my ear picks up the goodies. Like today...

At 08:00 I suddenly became aware of the mechanical 'jit...ji-jit' of a Redpoll. Looking up I detected just a lone bird, though it's possible there were more. Redpoll was a fairly scarce autumn bird for me in E Devon, and usually picked up calling overhead like this one, but this is actually my first in W Dorset! Admittedly my autumn birding has been slack in recent years, which explains why. Anyway, because I was carrying my recorder there is hard evidence of the happy event... 

 

In the field I heard a total of maybe ten or a dozen individual call notes over a few seconds. But what is especially interesting to me is the number on the recording. Careful analysis reveals some 40 individual notes over more than 50 seconds! The recorder picked up the bird ages before I did, and probably heard it for longer too. Which suggests to me that I am probably missing a lot of interesting bird sounds. With a 'daymig' recording I do not sit down and listen to the whole thing from start to finish. What I do is make a note in the field of the exact time that I hear an interesting call, and then review that part of the recording back at home. So then, what about the distant Richard's Pipit that my ear doesn't pick up? Well, if I miss a flyover Richard's Pipit I think I'd rather it stayed missed. I don't really want those kind of surprises!

Another feature of this morning was an evident arrival of Chiffchaffs. I counted 28 without really trying, and thought it would be nice to get a photo of one in order to capture the morning's vibe. Pointing the camera at a tangled thicket which clearly held a shifty little warbler I waited for it to emerge into view. And when it did...

...it was a Sedge Warbler!

Eventually I got another chance...

It was a Chiffy sort of morning

Finally, just for interest, here are the first three call notes on the above recording, stretched out a bit. The sound which emerges from a bird might sound like a short and simple 'peep', 'tic', 'sip' or 'jit' to us, but frequently there is hidden structure. And a sonogram brings that out amazingly...

Redpoll calls. The Zoom H4n Pro records in stereo, so what we have here are the left and right channels.