birding-aus

Speedy Hummers

To: David Adams <>
Subject: Speedy Hummers
From: Alan McBride <>
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:02:48 +1000
Thanks David,

As I said, it's right up there in things one needs to know in life;-)

Appreciate it and it is pretty cool:makes the old Peregrine a bit of a dawdler maybe?

Alan

On 04/08/2009, at 11:43 , David Adams wrote:

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Alan McBride<> wrote:
This may have been seen by a few of you but is right up there in information
one needs to know about:

http://bit.ly/CXTmk

Anyone watching the video should note that it's slowed down from real
life (that's the point.) When Anna's make their dive, it's a pretty
dramatic sight. They start off fairly high up, make what looks like a
nearly vertical descent and then pull out and back up and a sharp
angle at insanely high speed. The overall shape of the dive looks like
a sharp "U" - much sharper than appears in the camera angle of the
(very cool) video.

You can hear these birds all over the Western US - even in big cities.
The loud, distinctive popping noise the bird makes carries quite a
distance and doesn't sound like anything else in the area - natural or
synthetic. If I remember rightly, the 'pop' isn't a vocalization -
it's coming from the tail creating a tiny vacuum with it's tail at the
bottom of the "U" that is then filled in with a sharp, explosive
noise. The sharp bit at the bottom of the "U" has to be seen to be
believed.
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