For anyone interested in night-time calls of Moorhen the discussion is
pursued in Bird Forum, where I posted before receiving Rombout's
reply. Consensus is 100% Moorhen. I've also put up another recording
on my webpage (previously "lost" on a hard disk) which points pretty
conclusively to Moorhen. It's also clear that there's a pair. Fascinating.
Here's Bird Forum link: http://birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=3D90897
Here's my webpage again (now with 2 clips):
http://www.godsownclay.com/Recordings/recordings04.html
Thanks for the corrected url, Rombout. Maybe you should add the
Moorhens?! As to avoiding raptors, these two silly birds share almost
identical territory with a pair of Tawny Owls and would certainly meet
up with them as they fly in the fields where the owls hunt!!! Point
taken about perching, and I'll let you know if I have success with
night vision. Only thing I'm wondering about is the 914 nm wavelength,
which is shorter than my camcorder. With the camcorder the owls' eyes
glow like coals -- well, actually like powerful headlights.
romillyh
--- In "rombout_de_wijs"
<> wrote:
>
> Dear Romillyh,
>
> The link I gave included a dot in the end, which should have been left
> out: http://www.home.zonnet.nl/myotis/owlcoot.htm
> Please ignore the popup-ad.
> Moorhen quite often rest in trees, so this sound coming from a tree is
> not so strange in fact. Both Coot and Moorhem are rails, so apart from
> being active during daytime, they are also very active at night.
> Dispersing and migrating they usually do at night, otherwise they
> would be an easy meal for raptors I guess.
>
> I have myself tried an image-intensifier last spring to see Coot
> producing this call when flying over. Unfortunately they appeared to
> do so too high up, out of range, so I didn't see anything. I hope you
> can do better, please inform me if you do.
>
> Best wishes,
> Rombout
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