I think the recording was fantastic but I need to change some of the
id's here, The Mockingbird is an American Robin, Mockingbirds are
extremely rare in these parts and global warming has not quite sent
them scattering north and the crows are american crows, they do sound
different around the country but most Northwestern crows are out on
the ocean shores side of Washington State. These guys are definitely
American crows.
I love what you do, Alexia. If anyone is interested, she is holding a
Wilderness awareness class in June.
Please see this link...
http://www.wildernessawareness.org/adult/workshops_bird_language.html
Martyn
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Martyn Stewart
http://www.naturesound.org
Redmond WA
425-898-0462
Make every garden a wildlife habitat
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Listen to the Birds and the Bees at
http://naturesound.libsyn.org/
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View a Nature Recordists Blog!
http://naturesound.org/Nature_Blog/Nature_Blog.html
On May 29, 2008, at 10:24 PM, David Ellsworth wrote:
> Hi Alexia,
>
> Thanks for posting this!
>
> It was nice to have a story to go with the
> sound. I like how you allowed this recording to
> open with 5.5 seconds of "silence" which isn't
> silence, with a Mockingbird singing and some
> crows cawing in the distance. I found it curious
> how those Northwestern Crows' begging calls sound
> quite different than the American Crows' begging
> calls here (more "nasal"), while still being
> pretty similar. However, the adult crows' angry
> caws sound exactly the same as angry American Crows, to my ears!
> (I'll assume Doug's right, that they're Northwestern Crows.)
> I find it quite comical how juvenile crows
> continue to make their begging calls while still
> swallowing the food their parents just fed them!
>
> What recorder do you use? Perhaps when you
> record crows you should use a lower volume =97
> there's some major clipping/saturation in
> there! The same thing happened to me a lot back
> when I used my video camera to record sound (as a
> stop-gap until the Fostex FR-2LE became
> available); too low a volume and the ambient
> noise got swallowed up by the preamp noise, and
> too high a volume and loud sounds (such as crows'
> caws) got clipped. But on my FR-2LE, I can
> record at a very low volume (to allow for
> unexpected loudness) without losing anything.
>
> Lately I've had groups of American Crows spot me
> walking by and get angry, with no
> provocation. It's like they're recognizing me;
> why the memory offends them, I'm not sure! It
> could be that I've aimed my video camera or
> parabolic mic at some of them in the past, or it
> could be that they've heard me do my Common Raven
> imitation (this time of year, not more than an
> hour will pass without some crows
> mobbing/dive-bombing a raven, so perhaps that
> would mark me as something to be mobbed). It's
> only certain groups of crows that do this, but
> once one of them spots me, a whole bunch of them
> start cawing angrily. I can be reasonably sure
> it's directed at me (rather than a coincidence)
> because if I walk, some of them follow me. Has anyone else had this
> happen?
>
>
>
>
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