Randy:
My little story sounds pretty minimalist in comparison to yours. But I
wonder one thing: did you record the sound the grouse made when you grabbed
it?
lang
> 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 wiggl=
ed
> 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
> -----
> Randolph S. Little <>
> 111 Berkeley Circle, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920-2009
> Phone: (908)221-9173 Fax: (908)630-0871
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|