> I recorded them around the Pinnacles national monument, Bill.
> Same consistency as you described...
Martin,
Pinnacles is a reliable site for the species and they can also be recorded =
a bit further north
in the upper Los Banos basin. There is an 1898 specimen even further north =
from Hayward
on San Francisco Bay. If you record them in the Bay Area or further north i=
n the Coast
Range, I'd be interested to hear about it.
> > Is there an authoritative source for identifying bat species by
> > their sound?
>
> I use Sonobat for all my bat sounds, David.
> http://www.sonobat.com/
Sonobat is a good program, but the identification challenge lies in the lim=
ited knowledge
of call variation and geographic range of many species. The Western mastiff=
in northern
California is among the most distinctive, but there are rare specimen recor=
ds of another
nominal desert bat, the Big freetail, in northern California (extending int=
o the Pacifc NW)
This species has a similar call with frequency range a bit higher the Weste=
rn mastiff
(minimum frequency around 12 kHz rather than a bit below 7).
Bill R.
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