Marty's invitation to note his grouse anecdote may or may not have been
bait to get me to admit to some related things from my past, but this
playback and call down thread is irresistible anyway, so here goes.
First, the Spotted Owl recording on the Peterson Guide to Western
Bird Sounds was made by me in Cave Creek Canyon in May of 1977
on an Earthwatch expedition to record Chiricahuan bird sounds, and
I did NOT use any playback. As you have probably gathered from my
earlier posts, I regard nature sound recording as a scientific data
gathering endeavor and rarely use playback or imitation or spishing
to stimulate vocalization, and on those rare occasions the stimulus is
always noted even if it didn't seem (to me at the time) to affect the
animal's behavior. So I went back through my notes from that expedition,
and found two instances where I had used playback. One was playback
of a recording I had just made of a Western Screech Owl in a deliberate
attempt to lure it into view of fellow Earthwatchers. My notes say it
almost landed on my arm when I played its recording back to it. The
other was Wild Turkeys at Rustler's Park, where I recorded two turkeys
and then "got good looks at them when they came to investigate my
playback of their recorded gobbles." Note that in 1977 recording was
not prohibited in Cave Creek Canyon and our expedition was properly
permitted, but I still cringe at my two playbacks because neither was a
scientifically structured experiment and each was more for personal
edification.
OK, now back to Ruffed Grouse. In the mid 1950's I became quite
interested in Bonasa umbellus, and did such (foolish?) things as night
tracking in the snow by kerosene lantern light to find where they roosted,
and sleeping every night in a blind at a drumming log to get one photo
in the morning before going home for school (the old flashbulbs scared
the bird, so I got only one exposure each morning). Now, as if that
weren't crossing the line enough, the next year I had electronic flash
which didn't scare the bird away, so I brought a mirror in hopes of
stimulating something besides drumming. Sure enough, the grouse
attacked the mirror and uttered some vocalizations I had not previously
heard, but which I could easily imitate. So the next night, instead of
putting the mirror adjacent to his accustomed spot on the drumming log,
I propped the mirror against the blind, so I could imitate the whistling
from within the blind and directly behind the mirror. Enough? But why
stop when you are on a roll? Seeing that the grouse would look around
the edge of the mirror in an attempt to find the intruder, I gently wiggled
the burlap blind at grouse eye level next to the mirror while imitating
the whistles. But I was not prepared for what happened next: the grouse
lunged at the wiggling burlap, and my surprised recoil scared him off.
The next morning, however, I knew what to expect. At the moment of the
lunge, I quickly lifted the burlap and grabbed the surprised grouse! For
the rest of that year and the next, "my" grouse could be identified by
the piece of blue-insulated wire that was my improvised band on his
right leg. The following year, either another grouse took over that
drumming log or the "band" finally came off.
OK, I'm off to purgatory.
Good recording,
Randy
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Randolph S. Little <>
111 Berkeley Circle, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920-2009
Phone: (908)221-9173 Fax: (908)630-0871
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