Monday 20 April 2020

Stone Curlew over Garden!

Since my last post the garden lockdown list has increased to 38 species with some of the latest additions being Great Black-backed Gull, Heron and Swift. The swift was on the relatively early date of the 16th April. This appears to be 6 days earlier than Devon's first record for 2018 in the Devon Bird Report.

I have continued with the addictive "Nocmig" recordings and had some nice wader passage in the early hours of the 19th with Ringed Plover, Dunlin and Whimbrel moving through - Listen below.

However, the biggest shock was getting a faint but pretty distinctive Stone Curlew at 10pm last night! Ironically it was the only bird I recorded before it became too windy. 
You can here the recording below, though I would suggest listening with headphones, as it is a distant call. Despite the unwanted "noise" on the recording, to my ear I still think it is distinctive enough to identify. My suggested id also received a positive response from other more experienced sound recorders.
The sonogram, though pretty poor, also seems to be a similar fit to a couple of calls from the Xeno-Canto website. See below.

So, in the the last 10 nights the more notable birds I have recorded  flying over the garden include: 
Moorhen
Barn Owl
Common and Arctic Tern together (id thanks to Nick Hopper)
Sandwich Tern
Dunlin
Ringed Plover 
Whimbrel
Stone Curlew

I find this quite amazing, particularly as I am not even using an external microphone at the moment, simply the recording device only. It is certainly very addictive and I can thoroughly recommend getting involved. A simple recorder like mine only cost £100. 

I look forward to the next few nights analysis.......
You can listen to more of my recordings HERE


Sonogram of my recording (top) versus one from Xeno Canto 
 You can listen to the above Xeno Canto recording HERE which is most similar to my recording below.

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