Black-tailed godwits, Leighton Moss

Public transport routes and services change and are sometimes axed completely. I'll try to update any changes as soon as I find out about them. Where bus services have been cancelled or renamed I'll strike through the obsolete bus number to mark this change.

Thursday 13 July 2023

Nocturnal migration

We quite often get oystercatchers and redshanks migrating overhead at night and once every so often in Spring there'll be a mystery duck that I'm 80% sure is a scoter. Tonight's offering as I was putting the bin out was a loud "Kik! Kik!" that I didn't know. Searching for nocturnal migration calls is a pain in the buttocks: most guides to noc-mig get to the bit about "Identification" and just say "You can compare the calls or sonograms of calls with other recordings," which is rather less than useful. Xeno-canto is a great resource to check against if you've a fair idea of what you've just heard, or if you're teaching yourself bird calls. The Merlin app depends on your being able to record the call at the time and isn't 100% reliable (it finds redstarts and bee-eaters that aren't there). So I had to do half an hour's trial-and-error while reminding myself of the call and not starting to misremember it as any of the calls I was listening to. 

It was a water rail, of all things. Here's an example of the "Kik" call from Xeno-canto: https://xeno-canto.org/807215 

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