{"id":3735,"date":"2012-06-22T14:36:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T20:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=3735"},"modified":"2012-08-31T21:11:54","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T03:11:54","slug":"florida-part-1-recording-the-exotic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/3735","title":{"rendered":"Florida, Part 1: Recording the Exotic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Purple Swamphen, Pembroke Pines, copyright Andrew Spencer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Exotics tend to have a bad rap among North American birders.\u00a0 <\/span>They’re either disparaged, or more often, ignored entirely.\u00a0 <\/span>This is a bit of a shame – they’re not “bad” birds, so to speak.\u00a0 <\/span>It isn’t their fault they’re introduced to places far from their home range.\u00a0 <\/span>But something about them makes them slightly distasteful to the majority of us.\u00a0 <\/span>And I’ll admit there have been times when I’ve fallen into the same boat.\u00a0 <\/span>I’ve even flatly refused to go up into the Ruby Mountains of Nevada to twitch Himalayan Snowcock.\u00a0 <\/span>But when I was offered the chance to go to Florida to get recordings of a number of target species, including exotics, I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

Part of that was a chance to go to Florida, which offered the largest block of birds I haven’t recorded before.\u00a0 <\/span>But I’ll admit I was a bit curious to record exotics as well.\u00a0 <\/span>Almost nobody has spent effort on documenting their vocalizations in their introduced ranges, and it would be a challenge.<\/p>\n

So what follows below will be the very first earbirding trip report, of my trip to Florida.<\/p>\n

A goodly portion of my time was spent in the, ahem, noisy environs of Miami getting recordings introduced species.\u00a0 <\/span>Some of these will be very familiar to the ABA birder: Red-whiskered Bulbul, Budgerigar, or Common Myna, for example.\u00a0 <\/span>Others have received some press recently, but tend to fly more under the radar: Purple Swamphen, Mitred Parakeet, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>And some very few people ever even think about: Egyptian Goose, Indian Peafowl, even Red Junglefowl.<\/p>\n

Common Mynas<\/strong> (Acridotheres tristis<\/em>) have become quite common in southern Florida.\u00a0 <\/span>They can be surprisingly hard to hear, though – during the day they tend not to make too much noise, and they usually occur in very urban areas.\u00a0 <\/span>But a pre-dawn spent in a deserted parking lot in Kendall got me some good cuts of their cool songs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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