First recording of the year! (shame..)

Well, it has been way to long since I wrote something down on the blog. Well in fact it has been way to long since I've been sound recording. In the meantime I bought a 'dead-cat' so I'm eager to try it out. However, it has been extremely windy here in the Netherlands, and me living on Texel isn't going to help.. For example: I guess the wind hasn't been less than 5 Beaufort in a couple of weeks...

A few weeks ago I went with my girlfriend to Rome for a long weekend off. Didn't take my mic with me, but did bring my recorder! You never know. On the most beautifull day we went to Via Appia, a long and ancient road outside Rome. Although my girlfriend is not a birder, she has the patience to wait for me whilst recording. A pair of Italian Sparrows couldn't bother as well and the male was advertising just above me in a bush. I was happy!

I came home, loaded the recording and to my fear the volume was doing weird things.. After each loud tone, the rest was more silent. It was really annoying to listen at. I was affraid that the recorder broke down.. So I tested everything, made dummy recordings, listened to other recordings but only these new recordings were acting weird... I put it away, little bit annoyed.

Today, I was listening music and there it was again! So it had to be settings on the computer (also a new one)! Fixed it, Looked up the Italian Sparrow (Passer italiae) and yes! Here it is:



Cannot imagine it doesn't differ from House Sparrow, who will work out the differences in these vocabulair rich birds?

Soon spring will arrive in the Netherlands and with day length increasing I will most likely spend more time in the field. Then from 29 April onwards I will go for fieldwork in Korgalzhyn area, Kazakhstan for 3 months. I guess there is stuff to do there as well, no Sociable Lapwing recording yet on XC. Will keep you updated (either this blog or our project-blog: blacklarks.blogspot.com)

The Omani-experience

Some (many) of you knew that I was off for field work in Oman for almost two months. At the beginning of November I headed to Muscat and further to Barr al Hikman, a wonderfull tropical tidal mud flat. We would stay there for about 6 weeks for doing research on the stunning Crab Plover.

Pinna-country: biodiversity hotspot in this tropical area

Crab Plover - Dromas ardeola: my study object

My goal of these weeks was to film colour ringed Crab Plovers as long as possible. Easy goals and never satisfied. I came back with about 100 hours of film material. For me now the noble task to note down every step they take and how long they will handle that catched crab :). As a result I will hopefully be able to say what they eat and what they do all day. Fundamental knowledge for a better understanding of the ecosystem.

It was a easy living: wake up, shorts and t-shirts on, breakfast, when will it be low and then onto the flats for filming, be back before high water and start again the next day. No people to bother us, no traffic, only birds and an occasional fly-by by the pilots of the nearby military base. The world could have been devestated and we wouldn't know.

With my unsatisfying goal and no weekends (or days off really..) it was not a holiday but hard working. Of course not in bad circumstances. During high tides or waiting for birds to show up, it was possible to record some species. And so I did! Came back with 85 good recordings, including 4 new species for XC (thanks for the credits XC, I appreciate it!). I still have to dig into the differences in sound between Saunder's Tern and Little Tern.. And the same for Greater vs Lesser Sand Plover. Will save that for other days :)

One of the funniest things on the mud flats are the feeding flocks of Slender-Billed Gulls and Western Reef Herons, especially the latter. In small gulleys, they will feed on the many fishes and shrimps that will flow by. The herons, not knowing how and where to look, run, jump, fly and look hysterically in order to get as many food as possible. This, of course, will cause some trouble as your, also hysterical, neighbour takes your fish or you will accidentally trip over another bird... This hysteria (you can maybe compare it with the 'mine mine mine' from the gulls from Finding Nemo), combined with these sounds:


Now all the recordings are put on Xeno-Canto (took some time as batch-uploading was renewing), more posts will follow! Stay tuned

Rarity boom!!

Yes, finally! Autumn has erupted and the birds are on the loose. Lucky me for spending so many hours on islands (Texel and Vlieland). I was so rather busy that I forgot to work on older recordings, let's say from couple of weeks ago..
At the second weekend from Deceptiontours (DT2), the young lads (including me) were cycling just past Leo Heemskerk (a little bit older lad ;) ) and only 50 meters farther, I discovered a Richard's pipit (Anthus richardi) on the ground. That's the way to make the difference! ;)
Some record-recording:

But last weekend it was booming. A few days before, a total of 4!! Olive-Backed Pipits were present on Vlieland near the water treatment plant. So I helped Jelmer with another recording, although it was not that good (lots of people..) so I just ran away.. Find my own bird, I said. Then in the afternoon, a phonecall.. Sjoerd had found a candidate Siberian Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita tristis). As I have never heard the call of a Siberian Chiffchaff in real life, I was very curious! I listened to his recording (on his phone!) and I must say: I was convinced it was a 'tristis'. After searching some time, we found the bird, sometimes calling and sometimes showing, but it was very active. I recorded some calls.. But then.. I bumped my head in very interesting matter. 'abietinus' vs 'tristis', were to draw the border..

And the sonogram:

A 'sweeo' call. Known from both 'collybita' and 'abietinus' and might occur in 'tristis' however, no guarantees. On XC this type of call has been heard (and recorded) on birds that have the plumage of 'tristis' (for what we know!) in Oman and the type of call seems to become rarer towards India. This could imply a transition zone from 'abietinus' to 'tristis', or could imply that this sound is not (sub-)species specific! Another problem: Sjoerd's phone crashed, and he had the best recording, so hopefully the recording is saved on the SD.
Fortunately, in about a week I myself will visit Oman for fieldwork (watching Crab Plovers for 7 weeks) so I will be in the opportunity to sometimes record a Chiffchaff (and photograph it for the almost full documentation). (And yes, I already made a list of species where is only one or even no recording present in XC ;) ) Can, and hopefully will, do the same in Kazachstan next spring, will come back to that later.

So, bad luck.. Saturday was even worse! In short: was birdwatching with Mark, worked our asses of, checked EVERYTHING, found NOTHING, and then Radde's Warbler.. New species.. 4 hours of frustrating 'I see him! AAAAND it's gone' was taking me to the limit when I finally saw it. Criticaster me was discussing about the identification when Marijn called, I ignored his call.. 5 minutes later I gave Marijn a call and he was talking about 'something really strange, no idea what it was, some pipit with an metallic call in the forest (100 meter away!!!)'. We also went in to the forest and saw a crowd yelling and screaming and go mad whilst screaming 'It's a dendroica, it's a Myrtle Warbler'. What happened? The bird just was heard calling, 30 seconds ago.... F@#$ karma.. Gave a listen to the recording, thinking about Pechora and decided to play Pechora on my phone.. Surprised looks on the surrounding people asking: what is that? What are you playing? That's the sound!
Well yeah.. The sound really looks like Pechora Pipit (Anthus gustavi). However, only a few recordings are available and the sound does not match exactly. If it indeed was a pipit (bird was not seen through binoculars and only very short!), then it must have been a Pechora. The next day, the bird was heard 3 times more, but I didn't manage to hear it. However, to my opinion, there is not enough evidence.. But we will see!

In the evening I decided to stay on Vlieland to give the bird another chance. In the last daylight we were checking the fields near the village when we heard a 'raw rasping' wagtail. Alwin was the first one to spot it and yelled Citrine Wagtail. The others also saw the bird and the ID changed to Eastern Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla tschutschensis). It was windy, but fortunately, I made a recording in the hassle of tacking pics, clashing the ID, call others et cetera.. Only one call, but still! Damn what a sound. A rasping 'srieeuw' which is little bit reminding of Richard's Pipit. As we were photographing, a car approached us from behind, we gave him space to pass us, he got angry and horned loudly and flushed the birds to never see them again...
The recording (well.. ehm yeah..)


And the sonogram:

As you can see it is a bad recording. However, you do see the rasp in the call, the saw-tooth ('zaagtand' in Dutch, dunno if I can say it in English). It appears that the call is broken due to quality, yes it partly is, but it's due to the softer and harder quality of that part of the call, which is given its rasping sound (more or less). Untill now, this type of call has not been documented for Yellow Wagtails (Motacilla flava incl (sub)species). And the occurence always in late autumn and with very grey-white birds, this indicates an eastern origin. Here some pictures of the bird on waarneming.nl.
Well, another interesting matter: how do, for example, Yellow Wagtails from the subspecies 'beema' call? They are geographically close to M. tschutschensis.. Well, this spring I will go to Kazahkstan and as with the Siberian Chiffchaff, I hope to help with clinching the ID problems.

As if it couldn't get any stranger (note that the Eastern Yellow Wagtail was almost at the same spot as the Raddes and the Pechora), in the morning (in dense fog) we were waiting more or less at the Pechora spot, when all of a sudden (well, sort of) we were listening to an intriguing sound in the fog, which independently from each other drew our attention... Never seen the bird, nobody knows what it is.. A crate of beer for the one who knows (tip: do not only listen to the sound, also LOOK at it!). Note, it is the 'chep'-call


And the sonogram:

The feeling about the weekend changed when I got home and saw (again with help of Jelmer) that I recorded an Olive-Backed Pipit (Anthus hodgsoni) that flew over the village :)


Here some small extras. First a atmosphere sound on monday morning in the dense fog and immense migration!


And a comparison between the calls of Blackbird (Turdus merula) and Redwing (Turdus iliacus)

It has been a while

It really has been a while since I wrote a blogpost. I've been rather busy with my study and of course: it is top-birding time. Unfortunately the wind plays part in both the birds as the recordings.
The end of August I was at the Lauwersmeer for a week of birding. Only one morning it was good weather for recording, and so I did! The first birds I recorded were begging Water Rails (Rallus aquaticus), somewhat different from begging Eurasian Coots, and as far as I know, the only recording available on the internet. It differs in the number of bands and that it is more horizontal.


A couple of meters further, a Grasshopper Warbler (Locustella naevia) was present and calling quite anxiously. Didn't hear this one before (for earlier recordings of Grasshopper Warbler, see here)! It might have been a little afraid, but the bird showed up at only a half a meter (deep in the vegetation)


Then a couple of weeks with southwesterlies and less birding, but on 8 September Toy and I spent a visit to a Zitting Cisticola (Cisticola juncidis) which was present at Hendrik-Ido Ambacht. It was surprisingly rare in the last few years, whereas it was more abundant the few years before that. Already when entering the area, we heard the loud song!

Now it becomes more interesting ;) Every autumn since 2007 I spent 1-3 weekends on the island of Vlieland (Deceptiontours) to watch for rare birds and spent nice evenings in the local pub. As this is an island, Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is rare! This weekend some (2-3) individuals arrived on the island (new species for Vlieland) and the day after I succeeded in finding one and record it. Recordshot:

One of the few nice mornings this autumn (23 september), Toy, Alwin and I were in the search of Richard's Pipit (Alwin needed it for his Big Year), so we walked over the whole Hondsbossche Zeewering (for foreign people: a 5.5 km long dyke preventing Noord-Holland from flooding). A lot of migration was going on and I recorded some Yellow Wagtails (Motacilla flava), one of the last times this year.. Unfortunately

Then a Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus) flew by and luckily I recorded it! I say luckily, as I'm curious in the differences in call between Rock and Water Pipit (Anthus spinoletta). So hereby also a request: if you see one of these two species, try to record their flight call! One precondition: you have to identify the species by plumage! Not occurence! Please upload it to waarneming.nl, observado.org or xeno-canto.org. Thanks a lot :D

Later that morning we twitched a Red-necked Pharalope (Pharalopus lobates) in the fields near the Belkmerweg. The bird was foraging solely. Toy and Alwin couldn't resist getting closer to the bird for pictures. I couldn't resist trying to tape the bird, I did once and the bird responded softly. I had my mic ready and at a given moment the bird flew (no reason, for sure!) towards me, calling. The first recording of Red-necked Pharalope for the Netherlands. Nice sound! The bird flew to another field where it was heard calling every now and then.


Then a few weeks with too hard wind and busy with moving, study and watching birds. Untill yesterday 15 October. A 'piepje' warned me that there was a Olive-backed Pipit (Anthus hodgsoni) on the island of Texel. I recently moved to Texel, so this was a home match! I saw the message quite late, but just in time to get picked up by Alwin. Together we drove to the spot and spotted about 30 sad faces, all deciding to go home. We stayed with about 5 people and after two hours of searching, Jurrien found the bird! I didn't manage to see the bird, but heard it clearly, and recorded it less clearly! Later we found the bird sitting and the views were oke, at least for me. As I'm interested in Rock vs Water, Jelmer Poelstra is interested in Olive-backed vs Tree Pipit, so this one could be added to his collection ;).

Oh yeah, by the way: it was a LIFER!!

Spanish Pyrenees part 2: Sierra de Guara

The second week in the Spanish Pyrenees we were departed in a small village called Nocito. It is at the northern side of the Sierra de Guarra and still called part of the Pyrenees. This part has a complete different geology and is much lower than the High Pyrenees. Thus, more species, and especially more numbers both for birds as butterflies. The first few days I needed to rest and adapt to the much higher temperatures and spent some time in butterflies. We had found a kind of oase where butterflies came for their much needed water and nutrients (peeing on the road!!!) and we could chill underneath an overhanging rock and in the slow streaming creek, what a life!
One of our groupmembers got stung by an insect (probably mosquito..) and his feet bulged in such a way he couldn't walk anymore. So we transported him to the hospital and the doctors must have thought it was an unknown highly contagious disease, so they kept him in the hospital... The next morning, Jorrit and I were at the hospital to pick him up, but they still didn't let him go. So we decided to go for birdwatchin just out of Huesca. The first kinda road (more a dirt track..) we parked the car and went for a walk. We heard a sound that both made us laugh and say: a flying horse?? Then it dropped.. There were some Black Kites (Milvus migrans migrans) flying and calling. One individual was sitting in a tree and sometimes gave a call. At these moments, even when it was already 30 degrees, I get the goosebumps!


In the same area (agricultural), I finally managed to make a decent recording of European Bee-eaters (Merops apiaster). It are very difficult birds to record, as the are shy, flying high and softly!


In the meantime, we could pick up Sjoerd in the hospital, supplied ourselves with loads of water, food (sweet stuff and loads of beer) and other stuff and went for Roldán. A place where we only had heard of, but it was supposed to be awesome with vultures. So we went, in the heat of the day. We drove towards Roldán and in the distance we saw two huge cliffs where vultures were circling.. Could it be there? In fact, it WAS there! We parked the car (nobody else!) and walked around the cliff (it really is a 400 meter steep cliff). We saw some Sub-alpine Warblers (Sylvia cantillans cantillans) and saw two Western Orphean Warblers (Sylvia hortensis), not quite a species I suspected here but a tick for me! One individual was kind enough to give a call while recording. I'm sorry to dissappoint you, but this one comes later in a Sylvia-special (muahahaha, sounds exciting heh?). This all was guided by the vultures demonstrating Doppler-effect by their wings. So close, amazing! Well, it's one of those breath taking moments were you will think of when you're old..

Roldán - copyright Jorrit Vlot

Around our campsite there were several Iberian Green Woodpeckers (Picus (viridis) sharpei). They
especially called in the early morning (with hangovers..) and in the evening. One evening I spent on recording these guys, as their call is totally different than normal Green Woodpeckers, to me at least. It sounds to me as a hybrid between Green Woodpecker and Whimbrel, listen for yourself:






Faster, higher, 'ki' instead of 'kuh'.. Not even talking about the structure.. But al these questions? When is a Green Woodpecker calling and when is it singing? What types of calls do they produce and when? Do Iberian Green Woodpeckers produces also the 'normal' song (yes they do: http://www.xeno-canto.org/88786) and most especially: is it diagnostic?? I must admit: I don't know.. I can say that this sound (and I only heard this sound, every day for two weeks) is surprisingly different!

Keep recording!!