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!!

Mystery bird: the answer and the Pyrenees part 1

Last blog post I gave a sound recording of a mystery bird in the Pyrenees. I've got some reactions, mostly typical species from the higher mountains. I can imagine, as we live in the Netherlands, that we don't have that much experience with those species, but this species is actually a Dutch breeding species! Agreed, not a common one, but still!
It was the call of a Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe libanotica)! (Libanotica is surprisingly lighter than the nominate!) I'm totally unsure when the sound is given, I thought begging, but the bird was not a juvenile and other recordings (only a few!) were made for example in April, way to early for juveniles! At first I thought that it had to be specific for this subspecies, but it was also recorded in the Netherlands (by Herman van Oosten). So it must be a rather rare call.



As I said: I've spended my holidays in the Spanish Pyrenees. Hiking, landscapes, birds, butterflies, grasshoppers, plants, lots of fun and lots of friends, thé recipy for an amazing holiday. This time I had to choose what to do. You cannot go for a long hike if you want to watch butterflies or record birds, so every day was different. In total I made about 300 (after selection) pictures and 100 sound recordings (also grasshoppers, still working on them..). All of my Dutch observations and recordings are added to the online database waarneming.nl. Foreign observations and recordings are put on the international equivalent observado.org. Untill recently most of the observations of the latter are done by Dutch observers on holidays, by now more and more observers are putting observations in the database! Wonderfull! I've added all of my sound recordings on observado.org as well (http://observado.org/user/sounds/1246) and for 10 species it was the first recording, yay!

The first week we stayed at Benasque, a small village especially crowded in winter. As the first week in a new country is rather overwhelming, we made quite some hikes and it was windy all the time or there was a stream that ruined the recording. So, I did not manage to make a lot of recordings. When I hear a singing Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra curvirostra) I'm always amazed by the power, melody and variety between birds and populations. Here a bird from Spain, no idea of the type..


One of my targets, Citril Finch (Carduelis citrinella) was heard and seen flying frequently, but the calls were very soft and the birds are very shy.. Ridiculous how difficult they were to see and hear.. Still managed to make a short recording of the (sub?)song, it reminded me of the song of Reed Warbler..


In the mountains I'm always amazed by the melodious calls and songs of Alpine Chough's (Pyrrhocorax graculus graculus) given in stunning flight shows! It seems that they fly just for fun and showing of. My friends and I are struggling to climb that mountain and of course an Alpine Chough is challenging us by flying up and down the mountain with ease...


This where the bird recordings of the first week. The second week we spent time in the Sierra de Guarra, a more quiet area with higher numbers of species and individuals, so more recordings comming up! As said before, I also made several recordings of grasshoppers. Still working on them, but I will spend a blog post on them as well later on.

Pre-listen from the Pyrenees: mysterybird

From the 7th until the 24th of July I had my holiday in the Spanish Pyrenees with the JNM. Of course I made sound recordings and currently I'm working on them. In the meantime I have a mystery bird that I want to share with you! Eventually we succeeded in locating the sound and thus the species, but we never heard it before. Do you know which species it is only by the sound?



Some hints of the location: open areas without trees and with a lot of rocks. Mainly above 1800 meters, but also one time at 400 meters!