Monday, 12 October 2009

What is this Bird Song? - Solved

Last July when walking Bobby early morning past a group of trees I  often heard several birds but could never see what was singing. I recorded this one and seem to remember spending ages listening to song files on the net to no avail. More than likely it is a very common bird and with its single rising note once learned it will be easy to recognise in the future.

Blogger refuses to accept the player widget code from eSnips so I wasn't able to embed it in this post but the link should take you straight to the player on their site.

The sound is stored here: BIRD SONG.

Addendum:
My grateful thanks to Joe of Joe's Wildlife Garden (who found me a very similar sound file) and Frank of The Early Birder who both came up with it being a Chaffinch. It seems to be a variation of the Chaffinch 'rain song'. I had filmed a Chaffinch making its rain song in my post Bird Behaviour back in June but by comparison that one sounds as though it had laryngitis.

A few days ago I spotted this web under the bird bath part illuminated by the Sun.

Web

16 comments:

  1. I have listened to the birdsong and I do not know either.

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  2. Interesting bird call John. Very regular.
    Am always amazed at the.......amazingness of cobwebs!

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  3. Thank you for trying Lynmiranda.

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  4. It is Pam. I heard it on many mornings but the bird stayed hidden every time.

    I love to see the patterns in cobwebs.

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  5. I love the cobweb, they really are amazing constructions, not quite so keen when they appear in the house though ;)

    I have trawled through every bird sound I can find, excluding water birds, to no avail. The silly thing is though I am sure I have heard it many times myself. My only suggestion is that perhaps it could be part of the good old Starling's large repertoire!

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  6. Thanks for trying Jan. I suppose Starling is a possibility though, round here anyway, it is rare for them to be heard singly and to stick to one sound for very long.

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  7. Hi John,

    Well done for recording the bird song. We quite often hear that song around here. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure its a less common call of the Chaffinch.

    I managed to find a website that had a sound clip of this. Link is below:

    http://www.northamptonshirewildlife.co.uk/sound/chaff2a.wav

    I could well be wrong, but hopefully this helps a bit. :)

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  8. John. My memory bank believes this may be the sub-call by a Chaffinch. Not heard it that often but it definitely foxed me until I finally tracked down a male making a very similar sound in March 2008.

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  9. Hi Joe. Thanks for that. It is so close it should be the correct identification. It seems to be a purer, slower version of the Chaffinch 'rain call' I filmed a while ago. I just didn't connect the two.

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  10. Hi Frank. Thanks for that. I have some video of a Chaffinch making a vaguely similar sound though mine sounds as though it has laryngitis. It seems to be a variation of the Chaffinch 'rain song'. I didn't connect the two as being variations on a theme.

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  11. Thanks for the mention in this posting :)

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  12. Seems the bird has been identified.
    Just one of the great things about blogs; the helpful bloggers.

    Lovely shot of the web John.

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  13. My pleasure Joe. Thanks for helping.

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  14. Yes Keith. There is always someone out there in the wide wicked world willing to help.

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  15. Your photo of the sunlit spider web is beautiful. Lovely composition with the contrast of the heavy textured trunk and the glistening gossamer web, which appears wing-like.

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  16. Hi Glo. Every now and then, when the lighting is right, I think spiders' webs give great opportunities for photography.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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