Vicki,
Thank you for your reply and to all other's who replied as well...
I'm reasonably satisfied the mystery sound is the Northern Flicker... more
about this at the bottom of the post.
At 07:28 PM 6/12/2010 +1000, you wrote:
>There must be bird song CDs for the area where you live? For
>instance in Australia we have a 10 CD set 'A field guide to
>Australian birdsong'. All the same, it would take a long time to go
>through all the CDs to check up a mystery song.
>
>The alternative is to do what you are already doing, post the sound
>on the internet and ask for suggestions :-)
You are correct, yes, there are CD's of bird songs available for this area,
and I'm investigating purchasing a set.
Trying to identify that sound by listening to bird sounds on the internet
using the most common data bases of bird sounds is near impossible if you
have no idea what the bird is or looks like. One needs some sort of a
species clue to put into a search engine and that gets the door open and
makes an internet database search possible. But without a clue, it becomes
frustrating difficult. One of my favorite sounds databases to search is the
Macauly Library at Cornell University however the number of files for each
species is overwhelming and here you definitely need to know what you are
looking for.
I also belong to the BNA.bird/cornell.edu users group and have full access
to that fabulous resource but again, one needs to know what species one is
looking for in order to use it.
I also use the Xeno-Canto data base and again find the same issues as with
the others, you need some clue to start with...
I was hoping someone on here would have knowledge of some resource or neat
trick in using what is available to help sort this sound out...
As to identifying this sound as the Northern Flicker and not the Piliated
Woodpecker, it has a lot to do with the location. This sound was recorded
about 4 miles west of Hyannis on Cape Cod in a heavily developed
area. Flickers are very often seen in this area, I have seen two this
spring so far and this morning, Saturday, June, 12th, I'm hearing the
mystery sound all around me. According to the National Geographic
"Complete Birds of North America" book, this call that I am hearing and
have recorded is the mating call of the Northern Flicker.
And, my brother, much more knowledgeable than me in bird identification,
heard my recording and says without a doubt, it is the Flicker...
With you all available as a resource and a wonderful wealth of knowledge
amongst you, I will post the puzzlers here and I thank you all for helping...
--
Thanks,
Mitch & Shadow...
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