Recordists, Friends:
I just received a two CD audio set from Macaulay Library on N. A. owls. It=
appears to be a very excellent product, and I have listened to it twice
through. It was an experience that took me to many night-time woods and
fields, and back just fifty years - - - <:-| All of those at several
cooperating libraries, and you member contributors are to be congratulated,=
IMHO.
But as you might know, when I arrived at 16 to visit Cornell first in the
spring of 1956, I had brought tape recordings from PA I hoped to play for
P. P. Kellogg. I had accurately identified most of the bird species,
including a Blue Grosbeak, (which I have always claimed is what got my
dyslexic ass into the school -- Allen and Kellogg then needed sounds from
this species and still had some "pull" then).
But one recording, made in my yard in Pennsylvania at night in early summer=
was a puzzler. After recording with my home-made parabola from many hundred=
yards away, I began searching the woods with a flashlight - modest by
today's standards - homing on the occasional sound, and all I could ever
see through my opera glasses was what looked like a very tall Screech Owl,=
but it was not doing any visible calling! My bird books were very
rudimentary then, but I tentatively identified the bird as a Long-Eared
Owl, even though the habitat -- an old Willow marshy area - was just all
wrong. When I checked better sources the next day, the voice could not
have been more wrong, so I decided to let the Ornithologists at Cornell
figure it out. This sound was a high descending whistle. The Long-Eared Owl=
hoots deeply.
When, in 1956, I played this "cut" for PPK and Doc Allen, they demurred.
They explained that the vocalizations of owls were many and varied, besides=
the familiar ones usually associated with territorial and mating
activities. No, they said, they didn't accept donations to their library
without some fairly certain identification, and I could then and now easily=
see why they held this policy. Still, I was disappointed they had no ideas=
about the owls that made this strange sound. We all then forgot about it.=
For fifty years.
Well, yesterday it clicked. On disc 2 near the end there was that sound. I=
remembered it in an instant. I was very startled, since I wasn't listening=
for anything in particular, least of all this old memory. It was cut 83 on=
the second disc, tenth from the last. It is the begging call of fledgling
Long-Eared Owls. And I don't even know on which, in my pile of dusty 1/4
inch tapes, if any, the sound might still be! So, instead of driving to my=
45th college reunion today, I am posting these congratulations to the L of =
O.
-- affectionately, Marty Michener
MIST Software Assoc. Inc., P. O. Box 269, Hollis, NH 03049
http://www.enjoybirds.com/
"Science is really the art and patience of waiting a lifetime for the real=
answers to important questions." - MCM
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