I was hearing something the other day and wondering if it was a young
Channel-bill calling. (It wasn't.) It got me to thinking, do they have a
characteristic begging call? Does it vary depending on host? I checked
Morcombe and Pizzey and neither have a recording of the begging. I also
visited Graeme Chapman's wonderful collection of sounds and pictures. He
recently posted a link to his (fantastic) Channel-bill recordings:
http://www.graemechapman.com.au/library/sounds.php?c=88&p=125
...but also no begging. Do they even make such a call? As many times as
I've seen these birds calling and flying around, I haven't ever seen one on
the nest...I've see Koel, but not their big cousins.
Speaking of recordings, I was just reminded today that Graeme's collection
is very much worth visiting regularly. He's got very good recordings of
hundreds of Australian birds. It's easy for us to take such recordings for
granted, but they must represent a huge, huge effort...and not many people
seem to be making good recordings. I've tried with some borrowed gear and,
honestly, it's tough. Thinking back, I can remember seeing people making
recordings in the field two or three times, anywhere, ever. I couldn't
count the number of people I've seen with big lenses. (One of the two
people I remember clearly doing recordings was Aussie Susan Myers in Borneo
working on her then upcoming field guide. I had no idea who she was but her
name was so familiar. Through gritted teeth she said "Desperate
Housewives". )
Anyway, speaking of begging calls, off the top of my head, I can bring to
mind the sound of young Magpies and plenty of Cockatoo species. The
pleading and then feeding sounds of Cockatoo young sound much more similar
across species to me than the adults. The adults are readily
distinguishable but the young, not so much...for me. I'm in far southern
NSW so I don't have the same mix of species as some of the rest of you.
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