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.

Easily Pleased

I'll be honest, I'm disappointed. The weather forecast looked great. Cloud, rain later. When I switched on the recorder last night I was convinced that a few juicy waders would be caught in its digital net this morning. Even more so when I heard early reports of a nice arrival on the Axe before breakfast. But no. Two brief Moorhens. Sigh...

This afternoon Sandra and I went for a walk at East Bexington, straying over the border a little into West Bex territory. The fields look great. Already they are attracting Canada Geese and lots of Woodpigeons. I'm going to need to carry a scope pretty soon. The only gull gathering of note was at West Bex...

This is only part of it...

There are some 20 Med Gulls in that shot alone, and notice how several birds are only partially visible below the lowest ridge of shingle. You have to go down almost to the waterline to get a decent view. Picking through them all in a quest for more Yellow-legged action I could see at least four juvenile birds, but three of them were Herring Gulls. One wasn't though! Unfortunately they were jittery, and didn't let me get even slightly close, with the big gulls very quickly out on the water...

Juv Yellow-legged Gull. The tertials are not the more usual, simple thumbnail pattern, but already the head is looking nice and pale, with that characteristic dark eye patch becoming increasingly isolated and obvious.

While I was trying to creep up on the gulls, 4 Sanderlings flew through W, just off the beach, calling quietly. It was good to see waders on the move, and perhaps tonight's recording will be better...

Heading back to East Bex I pointed out to Sandra a tangled mass of dead bramble and told her all about what a little bird-magnet it was. And it's true. There is always something perched on it, sometimes several things. On my last visit it held at least 4 Whitethroats, 2 or 3 Stonechats, a brief probable Reed Warbler, and a not-brief definite Reed Bunting. I've seen Corn Bunting sing from it. Right now though, it held absolutely nothing. We paused a while and stared at the resolutely birdless pile of sticks. Still nothing. We turned away and took about three steps along the road...

'Tswee!'

A call I knew, but couldn't immediately place.

And then suddenly there it was, perched jauntily on the bird magnet...

Male Yellow Wagtail.

I was chuffed to bits to see this. In the 17 years I've spent birding (in my on-and-off way) in East Devon/West Dorset I don't need many fingers to count how many males I've seen in this plumage. Less than a hand's worth. And they have all been in spring. This is only my second July Yellow Wag locally, and the previous one was on 31st, so virtually August. What a cracker! It made my day.

Doesn't take much to keep me smiling...

A Bizarre Coincidence?

A couple of catch-up items...

First, the colour-ringed Med Gull at Cogden Beach on Wednesday evening. It was ringed as a pullus at Pagham Harbour in June last year, and went on a winter vacation to northern Spain before its reappearance on the S coast...

Almost certainly the same bird was a few miles east at Abbotsbury Swannery earlier the same day, but flew off before the ring could be read, and as UK-ringed Med Gulls are apparently very scarce in Dorset I am pleased that it stayed local for long enough to give us another chance.

Secondly, garden birding...

Despite easing of the lockdown I have kept going with the BWKM0 list (Bird Watching at Kilometre Zero, in case you needed reminding) for no other reason than the fact that it's been fun. The whole enterprise has added immeasurable enjoyment to my local birding. For starters it is responsible for my entry into the world of nocmig, and that has been simply brilliant! But more fundamentally it has got me thinking about - curious about - my really local birds, those I can see or hear from home. For example, without BWKM0 I wouldn't have noticed that Greenfinch is seemingly hard to come by at NQS Manor, but boy, have I struggled to get it on the list! Finally I managed a nice male earlier this month, but had to scope a distant apple tree in order to see it. However, the very same day that Greenfinch fell, something rather more bizarre also happened...

Back in the spring I spent a lot of time skywatching from the garden. With the arrival of summer my efforts in this area dwindled massively, but on Greenfinch Day I was at it again. Around lunchtime I spotted a few gulls off to the west and raised my bins for a proper look. I could barely believe it when one of them was a Fulmar! In leisurely fashion it cruised off in a more-or-less westerly direction and out of view. I would imagine it skirted the northern edge of Bridport itself. If this had been my first encounter with a from-the-garden Fulmar (bearing in mind I live three miles from the sea) I would have had it all over the blog that same evening. But it wasn't. NQS readers might recall the previous occasion, which was so astounding that I felt the need for upper-case lettering and exclamation marks.

So, what's going on? There is no question that in this neck of the woods an inland Fulmar is a rare thing. And when I say 'inland' I mean almost any appreciable distance from the sea. For example, The Birds of Devon (Tyler, 2010) lists just ten 'inland records' and one of those reads as follows: '2007  One circling a mile inland from Seaton, 30 April'. A mile inland! That's all. Virtually anywhere away from the sea is quite clearly a highly unusual event in Devon. The Birds of Dorset (Green, 2004) says that Fulmars '...are occasionally seen inside Poole and Christchurch Harbours and flying over sites close to the coast such as Radipole and Lodmoor NRs.' It also cites a handful of what it refers to as 'more unusual sightings'. These include one over Stoborough, near Wareham (approx 5 miles from the sea but less than 2 from Poole Harbour) and another over Holdenhurst Road in Boscombe (approx 2 miles from the sea) - both June records. You get the picture though - if these sightings are sufficiently noteworthy to be included individually in the county avifauna, they are very unusual indeed.

What can I say? First, I wasn't seeing things. It was most definitely a Fulmar, though unfortunately already a bit too distant when I spotted it to consider a photo. A Twitter contact suggested that I check local quarries! Inland nesting is very much a thing with Fulmars elsewhere in the country, so I did check. Not physically, but I checked the literature, and a Somerset contact kindly let me know the situation in that county too. And no, there are no inland, quarry-nesting Fulmars nearby. Was it prospecting then? I doubt it. I think it was nothing more than a very bizarre coincidence. To see one, even slightly-inland Fulmar in Dorset, or our near neighbour Devon, is a once-in-a-blue-moon event. For that bird to be three miles inland, and visible from your garden, even more so. For that to happen twice (May 22nd and July 6th, 2020) is just ridiculous. If it ever happens again, I will have to assume it is the same, slightly crazy, local bird, on a massive, massive wind up...

Simple Pleasures

The last couple of evenings have been pleasant enough to tempt me to sit outside and keep my nocmig recorder company for a while. Recently I've been averaging just one or two notable birds per night, so my expectations were low. However, last night I heard a Barn Owl at 22:57. It sounded quite distant, and certainly wasn't loud. Prior to taking up nocmig I would not even have registered it as Barn Owl, but I've had so many now that I am very switched on to that call. Sure enough, when I reviewed the recording this morning there was a nice little Barn Owl screech at 22:57. And reasonably loud too - I would never have guessed how distant it sounded in real life. The mic is definitely more sensitive than my ears!

The recording also delivered my first Curlew and a single, very unmistakable 'kleep' from an Oystercatcher. A good night.

Late afternoon and I was back on the coast, walking from Abbotsbury beach car park to West Bexington and back. There were far fewer small gulls than my last visit, and I saw little more than a handful of Meds. But it doesn't take much to keep me happy, and the simple pleasure of a fresh juvenile Reed Bunting at East Bexington was enough to put a smile on my face. They don't breed at East Bex as far as I know, so this little chap is evidence of a bit of post-breeding dispersal, from Abbotsbury or West Bex perhaps. Movement. Always good...

So where are you from, my little friend?

I spent some of the return leg on the beach, so as not to miss any gulls on the waterline, where they can be invisible from the coast path. Approaching a small group of big gulls I was overtaken by another big gull heading over the surf towards them. Aha! One of my hoped-for target birds...

And there it is dropping in at the back of the group. Even in this shot there is just enough there to tell you it's a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull

I tried the tactic that worked with the Med Gulls a couple of days ago. A very slow approach, stopping frequently. Rather than lifting off en masse, the nearer gulls peeled away one by one, quite sedately, as I got closer and closer. The Yellow-legged Gull was so relaxed that it had settled itself comfortably on the shingle, but in just about the most inconvenient pose regards showing off its diagnostic features. My plan was to approach sufficiently close to coax it into standing up...

Juv YLG in super-relaxed mode

Well, it was a plan.

Sure enough, it did stand up...and simultaneously launched itself off the beach! I got a couple of distant shots on the water, before it upped and headed for France...

My current approach to local birding is just to go where the fancy takes me. I've talked about this before, and it is working well. Rather than feel duty-bound to visit a particular patch - an approach with which I've struggled in the past - I feel delightfully liberated. My birding is still all local of course, but completely without self-imposed constraint. Frequently, when the birding is slow, I get ample pleasure from the simple act of walking in lovely surroundings, probably because I've chosen to go there rather than felt obliged to. For me this works perfectly right now. Hopefully it will continue to do so...

The Eye of the Beholder

Beauty. One definition of the word reads thus: a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Well, my aesthetic senses (especially my sight) were well pleased with this lot, on the beach between Burton Bradstock and Cogden this evening. Walking very slowly and quietly did the trick.

First, a selection of juveniles. Interesting to see one or two juv feathers being replaced already as they move towards first-winter plumage...

This first-summer is sporting a UK ring. Details awaited.

Shame this adult wasn't fitted with a colour ring too.

That's it. No fancy words. Just Mediterranean Gulls. Hopefully that was sufficient.

Gull Fix

It was nice to visit East Bexington again today. It's been a while, and I was well up for a late afternoon stroll along the Burton Road towards West Bex. Things have changed a bit since I was here last. All the cereal crops have been harvested, and there are now acres of stubbly fields to get excited about. I don't know how long they'll be in this state, but a few months I hope! Anyway, my principal interest today was the sea, so it was good to see plenty of activity out there. Lots of Med Gulls and Common Terns were passing, and I spent a pleasant hour sitting on the beach being entertained by them. Several pulses of Swifts went by, and at least 30 Sand Martins. Best of all though was this...

This unseasonal Great Northern Diver might well be the first I've seen in July

Initially it was quite distant, and feeding constantly. It was only on the surface for seconds at a time, so picking it up with the camera was really tricky. Gradually it came closer though, finally loafing about for a few minutes at reasonable range before heading out again. It hasn't finished growing new flight feathers yet, so I guess it might be around for a while.

By the time I was nearly back at the car park it was gone 7pm, and I thought birdy thrills were done for the day. Wrong. A few big gulls were wheeling around over the shingle, and I casually raised my bins for a quick look. Ooh! Is that a juv?? It was, and as it banked I got an eyeful of black and white tail. It was a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull...which promptly disappeared over the beach ridge towards the sea. I've been really looking forward to my first juv Yellow-legged Gull of the year and didn't want this chance to slip through my fingers, so forced myself into a sort of shuffly trot up the shingle to the top. It was worth it...

It's the shiny new one on the left

Gulls aren't for everyone, I know, but for me these contrasty beasts are a real treat. Much more neat and crisp than the gingery juv Herring Gulls which will be everywhere pretty soon.

I've included the next couple of photos in order to illustrate an ID feature which I've always found useful on juv YLGs. It's the white area around the upper mandible. When viewed head on, it gives them a white-nosed appearance. It's just a minor feature really, but quite helpful when picking birds out at range if they're facing you.

Juv YLG showing 'white nose'

Really not dross.

When it decided to head for Portland I managed to fluff the flight shots, but hopefully there will be a few more of these beauties to come. Heading for home, I was a happy chap...

Wader Fix

Dropped in to Black Hole Marsh in Seaton after work today. Wader fix...

Haven't seen a Ruff in its party clothes for years. Only half-dressed now of course, but still pretty cool.

Juv Little Ringed Plover. One of two present. It is basically standing in a toilet.

Adult Greenshank having a shuffle.

Both juv LRPs

There were also 10+ Common Sandpipers and a couple of Dunlin. When Black Hole Marsh was a ten-minute walk from home I most definitely took it for granted. I foresee a few after-work visits...

Locally there is little to report, though a Lesser Whitehroat in The Burton Cliffs scrub yesterday morning was presumably a migrant. First thing today was really quiet, though it was such a beautiful morning , and the view so terrific, that it hardly mattered.

Mid-July is such a weird time. At my age I hate to hurry things along, but I wish autumn would get on with it properly...

Clifftop sentinel. Black & white seems appropriate somehow...

PS. Out of curiosity I checked the Dorset Moth Group website for Lunar Hornet Moth records in the county. Its local status is listed as 'Scarce and thinly distributed or restricted resident' and since 1986 (the 'first record on file') there have been just 64 records. Roughly two a year. This puts yesterday's jammy encounter in perspective...