On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 8:33 AM, chrishails50 <> wrote:
>
>
>
> My vote would also be for Greenfinch (pretty sure its not a Water Rail !)=
.
> I do have bits of Redpoll contact calls that sound like that but they are
> very much shorter. Greenfinch is more likely in the locality described
I don't now the details of the locality (and don't even know the summer
habitat of the Redpoll), but my guide says that they are year-round
residents in the UK, even more so in the northen half...
> and have a listen (and watch the sonogram) to what I call the "swirl"
> call in the middle of this page:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/buw27nl
That's a really good match, for sure!
> I guess I need to write up Redpoll now....
>
> (Serge how sure can we be that xeno-canto link is correctly identified ?)
>
True enough, I'm not sure at all!
I'm quite confident in the person that provided me with the ID (an
emeritus birder, bander, and avid migration listener, hence he knows
A LOT about all kinds of bird calls) than I'll probably ever be in xeno-can=
to
(even if there is probably much more knowledge in the sum of all
xeno-canto contributors than in a single brilliant individual, but this
knowledge is not put to use in every single recording on their site).
But, sure enough, Willem-Pier could tell us more about the
validation process at xeno-canto.
Personally, I've never noticed something like that in greenfinch calls,
and I tend to think that a greenfinch would mix one of its more familiar
calls rather sooner than later.
But we, well me at least, tend to not concentrate much on calls that
are not very specific, as we reasonably prefer to rely on more
species-specific calls.
The calls in Graham's recording are also not far from what a Chaffinch
would do, so it feels like a call whose structure is shared by many
fringillids.
Browsing through xeno-canto's recording for the greenfinch, I find:
- http://www.xeno-canto.org/27688
Remotely similar, but the sonogram is quite different from yours.
- http://www.xeno-canto.org/30108
One can hear some similar sounding calls in the background
at the start of the recording, but, as I said above, they are mixed
with other more familiar calls.
- http://www.xeno-canto.org/40196
Now this one IS A REALLY GOOD FIT, including the absence of
what I called "familiar" calls.
After listening to this, I think that Graham's recording can
very well be a Greenfinch (there are some in the background, so
they're definitely part of the landscape "up there" at the moment
of the recording).
So, Greenfinch 4, Redpoll 0? ;-)
HTH (?)
--Serge
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