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New Listserv Alert

New Listserv Alert

Last spring Chris Tessaglia-Hymes of Cornell University started a listserv devoted to the discussion of nocturnal migration.  Here’s how Chris described it in his inital post:

The primary purpose of the List is to provide an effective electronic forum for experienced birders to discuss the identification of night flight calls of migratory birds, exchange ideas about recording equipment design and setup, disseminate information about active or predicted night flights in your area, and to better understand weather and RADAR data as they relate to patterns of nocturnal bird migration.

The listserv started off slow, but it has slowly gained participants (including, just recently, yours truly), and now that the southbound nocturnal migration is in full swing across North America, the postings are really picking up.  You can monitor the discussion at the online archive.  To join the list, you can email Chris to request that he add you, or you can check out the Welcome and Configuration page.  Either way, this is a great opportunity to join (or just to listen in on) the national conversation about nocturnal flight calls!

We are not alone!

We are not alone!

My friend Walter just sent me a link to Paul Driver’s excellent bird song blog.  I searched the web for other bird song blogs before I started mine, but I certainly missed this one!  According to his brief bio on Xeno-Canto, Paul is British by origin but now lives in the Philadelphia area.  I highly recommend a visit to his site–he’s only been posting for six months, but he’s already amassed a terrific collection of bird sounds, with spectrograms, audio, and commentary on each.  I am particularly impressed by his focus on little-known vocalizations, including flight calls, begging calls, alarm calls, and the like.  I mean, he’s got five different calls of Gray Catbird up right now (with multiple examples of a couple of those): that’s far better than XC at the moment!  Alas, no crossbills.

Keep up the good work, Paul!