Hello all, As Scott Rashid posted, he was kind enough to take me to see a pair of Northern Pygmy-Owls near Estes Park on Monday night, and I made several sound recordings. Amazingly, this is one of only a handful of recordings of the primary song of Northern Pygmy-Owls from the entire southern Rocky Mountain region.
Pygmy-owls here in Colorado sing slightly differently than Pacific Coastal birds, southern Arizona birds, and apparently even those in Montana. But nobody knows exactly where the changes between these songtypes occur, or how abrupt they are, because we just don’t have enough data. Now, my friend Arch McCallum is setting out to get to the bottom of this tricky situation — and you can help. Here's all you need to do: 1. *Find a singing pygmy-owl.* 2. *Get out a stopwatch and count how many “toots” the bird makes in one minute.* 3. *Send this information, along with location, date, and time of day, in an email to Arch (mccall...@appliedbioacoustics.com).* Alternatively, if you wish, you can also make a one-minute audio recording. Just take a video with your digital camera, or invest in a cheap voice recorder. (Actually, if you wish, you’re welcome to record (or listen to) the bird for longer than a minute! The more data, the better.) If you'd like to get an overview of the vocal differences between Northern Pygmy-Owl populations, including audio recordings, you can find one on my blog: http://earbirding.com/blog/archives/2800. Hope to see a lot of data points roll in this spring! Here’s to good owling. Nathan Pieplow Boulder -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
