Yesterday morning I was out in my suburban yard in south-central Maine watching a nice morning flight of birds moving over and through when I began hearing the "chuck" call of a Hermit Thrush from the neighbor's backyard. Soon it began alternating between the "chuck" call and the drawn-out "whee" nocturnal flight call. I went inside to get my camera to record it (my recording gear was packed away) and by then it had flown up across the street into the top of a tree. At that point it began just doing the flight call with no more of the "chuck" call and then it moved to another taller tree 100 yards away where it stayed and continued doing the call for a bit before suddenly stopping. It may have flown away or it may have just stopped calling and dropped down somewhere nearby but I never saw or heard it again.
I was able to get some of the calls on some video clips, one of which I posted up on my YouTube channel for anyone interested. I think I have some recordings of Hermit Thrushes interspersing the nocturnal call into songs during the breeding season and I know I have a recording of a Swainson's Thrush doing that. Anyway, you can hear the calls on the video titled "Hermit Thrush giving nocturnal flight call" at: http://www.youtube.com/birdconservation Interestingly, the second call it gives on the video is much burrier than what I think of as normal and some of the calls seem a bit shorter than what I am used to hearing at night. Jeff Wells Gardiner, Maine -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
