Well, I’m back from two weeks in southern Sonora, recording bird sounds with an expedition led by the Sonoran Joint Venture and Western Field Ornithologists in the Sierra de Alamos / Rio Cuchujaqui Wildlife Protection Area.  It was a fantastic trip; I got 10 lifers and accumulated 19 hours of audio to sift through.  It’ll be great blog fodder once I catalog it all.  In the meantime, I’m still struggling to crawl out from under the massive pile of Things To Do Now That I’m Stateside, so I thought I’d just share with you a quick sample of some of the more interesting audio moments from the expedition.

Here’s the sound of a female Rose-throated Becard seizing a cicada, beating it against a tree limb until it quits stridulating, and then consuming it.

Here’s a large colony of bats squeaking in their daytime roost in the skirt of dead fronds below the crown of a palm tree.

If I were to judge a birdsong contest in Northwest Mexico, I’d have to give a prize to Sinaloa Wren, whose contributions to the soundscape were rich and frequent.

But I also love the sweet, soft, musical song of the Rufous-bellied Chachalaca.

No Mexican audio sampler is complete without this bird sound (in fact, much of a recordist’s time in Mexico is spent trying to get away from this species):

Near the El Cajon camp, an adult Gray Hawk fed two young at a nest right above my head:

And here’s the grand finale: the sound of a small group of Black-throated Magpie-Jays driving a Laughing Falcon off his perch.  He isn’t laughing about it, but if you listen closely, you can hear a couple of his faint chuckles.

In the coming weeks, look for some blog posts with a decidedly southwestern flavor!  It’s good to be home.