Yet-another-mystery-ID for y'all ((566K mp3):
http://quietamerican.org/download/dropbox/SF_CA_October_ID.mp3
Last week I heard a very distinct new occasional caller for the first
time in our backyard. We've only lived in this house (hillside
southern San Francisco) for about 15 months, but I'm quite sure we
didn't hear him/her last year. I've heard several of these guys
calling to one another from trees on our slope (as you can hear in one
of the sample excerpts).
The call I would describe as a very clear, melodic, descending pattern
of four notes, almost like the beginning of an etude -- almost a clear
step down of diatonic notes across an octave. Quite unmodulated, no
trilling, etc.
The caller would alternate between this four note dropping series
(with the fourth note down about an octave from the first) and
variations on it that included only the first two or three notes,
sometimes "resolving" to a different final note.
Apologies for crude filtering in the samples, I rolled off around 500
Hz -- of course, the morning I recorded this last week was as noisy as
could be! Airplanes, construction, etc...! In the first snippet one
caller is very close but not doing the longest call variant.
Fwiw I was able to get a look at the caller when it was nearby, I
would in my ignorance characterize it as a small (larger sparrow-sized
and -like) nondescript brown songbird.
This may be an easy one... something related to an american tree sparrow?
I'd be curious to know if this was a regular migrant (or even
resident!) in San Francisco, have I been that tuned out!?
best,
aaron
--
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