[nfc-l] Cascade crest 8-24 AM obs and musings
Hi all, This past weekend I spent some time backpacking along the crest of the Cascade Mountains near Glacier Peak. My second night, I woke up to a deer (initially thought to be a bear) in camp at about 4:30 AM at Buck Creek Pass (~5700'). I was on edge enough afterwards that I decided to stay up and hear out the rest of the night as the marine layer was nonexistent that morning. At about 5:00-5:15AM there was a 5 minute window where SWAINSON'S THRUSHES started doing their nocturnal flight calls all around me. Some were definitely already on the ground in the forest, but there were others that were actively calling overhead. As abruptly as it started, it ended without another 'peep'. I also had a CHIPPING SPARROW or two fly over during this time. I think the Cascade Mountains provide an extremely interesting case of the unknown influences of weather and topography on migration. There were flocks all over the our 30+ mile hike along the crest that contained dozens of Yellow-rumped Warblers, Chipping Sparrows, with a smattering of Townsend's, MacGillivray's Warblers, etc. still hanging around...yet how these birds decide to migrate through and out of the area I find to be an interesting question. There is often a marine cloud layer (flat gray stratus that act as fog when you're in them) that are often backed up against the west side of the Cascade Mountains between 2000-6000 ft ASL (sometimes deeper). This presents a problem because there are a lot of hills and mountains in that elevation range so a bird flying in the fog could potentially just fly into a mountain. So I'm assuming most of these birds either do one of four things when they decide to move south...1) they migrate altitudinally to the Puget Sound/Seattle/Portland areas and migrate southward underneath the marine layer or 2) fly up and over the Cascade crest to migrate on the typically much clearer and drier (usually no marine layer exists) east side of the Cascade Mountains or 3) fly up above the marine layer in between the highest peaks at (7000-1 ft) and/or 4) only migrate on days where the marine layer doesn't exist. I've always found how birds migrate in complex topography to be fascinating and an extremely interesting question...and certainly this marine layer just adds a little more spice to the question for those in the Pacific NW. Colby -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
[nfc-l] 8-18 & 19 Eastern WA (late report)
Hi all, I spent a fair amount of time recording and listening on Wednesday (8-18) and Thursday (8-19) nights last week just west of Spokane, WA adjacent to the local national weather service office. To familiarize everyone with the location, it's located at ~2300 ft on a large plain that eventually tapers off to ~800 ft along the Columbia River ~100 miles to the southwest. To the north and east are a number of hills (3000-4000 ft ASL) within 25 miles and mountains rising to between 5000-7000 ft ASL within 50 miles. Anyway, CHIPPING SPARROWS were the most common flight call heard and recorded. WILSON'S WARBLERS were probably second most common. I also had several YELLOW WARBLERS. In addition, I had a couple double banded upsweeps that remind me of NASHVILLE WARBLER's daytime call note, and I had one double banded upsweep that was sparrow-esque...assumed to be a VESPER SPARROW given the time of year. I also had several other 'seeps' that certainly could have originated from MacGillivray's and Townsend's Warbler, but who knows as I'm not aware of any recordings for these species. I also had a BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON call three times as it flew over, which is apparently fairly rare for northeastern WA. I also had a BAIRD'S SANDPIPER (called once) and a SPOTTED SANDPIPER (quite low) migrating overhead. Interestingly, ZERO Swainson's Thrushes were heard. Interestingly, in all my nights listening (a couple dozen) in Utah, I never heard a Hermit or Swainson's Thrush in either the spring or fall. I don't know what these birds do between the Cascades/Sierras and the Continental Divide given my experiences thus far as I'm certainly quite baffled at this point... Colby -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
Re: [nfc-l] NFC Detectors and Equipment?
Beautiful, Tim! This helps a lot. All the Best, Eric From: Tim Krein To: nfc-l@cornell.edu Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 11:10:59 PM Subject: Re: [nfc-l] NFC Detectors and Equipment? Some comments below regarding use of Raven for review of detections/selections. Also, to answer Chris T-H's question about the BirdCast transient detector and the energy detector in Raven, the detector in Raven is a port of the old BirdCast detector to Java. They should function similarly if you use the same parameters. - Tim On 8/22/09 10:06 AM, e kent wrote: Erik Johnson wrote: "What's also frustrating is that I get a TON of trash clips - many more than birds clips." > >To be clear, I'm a hobbyist with limited time, so I use detectors *assuming* >it will give acceptable results more quickly than viewing/listening to sound >files directly. > >Unfortunately, as Mike Lanzone points out, Trash-versus-Bird is one trade-off >when using detectors. However, this trade-off can be mitigated by an >efficient tool to sift through the trash. For the this discussion, I'll say >the software detection process has two major phases: the software detection >itself, and then the human classification phase (trash versus bird). > >Not sure if others agree, but as others work to improve the detectors, I think >a quick win is an improved tool for the 2nd phase, wheat-vs-chaff >classification. > >For example, last night I ran a file through a Raven detector graciously >forwarded by Mike Powers. Examining the results with Glass-of-Fire, >I labelled one sound out of 200+ detections as a bird (same as when I used >Tseep/Thrush against the file). This was quick and painless. > >However, individual review of Raven detections revealed I *incorrectly* >labelled 7 bird calls as Noise in Glass-of-Fire. This is because >Glass-of-Fire stretches spectrograms to a pre-defined size, rendering the bird >calls visually unrecognizable. So, the detector found birds, but the >efficient classifier was inaccurate. > >Manual review of each Raven detection was accurate, but highly inefficient: >viewing hundreds of selections one-at-a-time is slow and tedious. The >bounding boxes effectively hide short sounds. Keeping or deleting good/bad >selections from the selection list is error prone.TK> You can hide the >bounding boxes in Raven using the Layout side panel. When doing this, you can >increase the opacity of the selection fill to be able to see the selections, >thereby allowing you to see the entire selection without the bounds getting in >the way. You can also show the selection number using the View > Configure >Selection Labels dialog. This is what Anne K. has done effectively. We've >recently received requests to be able to advance through selections >automatically without any keystrokes or button presses. In Raven Pro 1.4 >build 24 (currently in test), we have such a feature. You can advance through >each selection with a delay time in between, and you can optionally play the selections as you advance through them. Perhaps this is still not as efficient as MxN selections displayed in a grid, but it does save on RSI for those people who have to scan their selections. Rather than deleting selections from a table, it might make sense to add a particular annotation to them (x, d for delete, b for bad), then sort by that annotation column, then move all of the matching annotations to a new table. We'll open a new feature request for the clip viewer. > >Glass-of-Fire is a great format: view page-fulls of spectograms, and quickly >classify them with key combos. A great improvement would be to present >spectrograms without stretching. To use Raven detections with a Glass-of-Fire >style viewer, it would be helpful to see more sound around the Raven >detection. For example, in the case of a longer bird call it >successfully detected part of the call, without selecting the whole sound. In >the case of a short call, it's difficult to understand what you're looking at >without seeing more context around the sound.TK> When you export clips from >Raven (File > Save All Selections...), you can specify a pad size so that >Raven saves extra time around the selection as part of the exported file. >This will not get you identical file sizes unless you first alter the size of >the selections in Raven. You can also save the Raven table, then edit it in >Excel so that all of the selection time widths are identical. > >Regardless, I think increased efficiency during human classification should >allow current detectors to flag even more sounds, catching more bird calls >along with the trash. > > >Thanks, >Eric > > > > > > > > From: Chris Tessaglia-Hymes >To: nfc-l@cornell.edu >Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 2:09:37 PM >Subject: [nfc-l] NFC Detectors and Equipment? > >Hi everyone, > >In the past, I have not used any detectors
Re: [nfc-l] Nocturnal migration, Boulder County, Colorado, Aug. 23-25
Ted, et al, Re MacGillivray's, I don't have any recordings but I have heard them give a husky "seet" much like that from Mourning Warbler. best wishes, Michael O'Brien - Original Message - From: "Ted Floyd" To: nfc-l@cornell.edu Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 2:18:04 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [nfc-l] Nocturnal migration, Boulder County, Colorado, Aug. 23-25 Hello, all. 1. With light north-northeast winds and decent cloud cover, the pre-dawn night flight earlier today, Tuesday, Aug. 25th, over Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado, was the best thus far this season. (There's something special about the exact date of Aug. 25th here in Boulder County.) Anyhow, details at http://tiny.cc/r13NJ 2. Detectable nocturnal migration over Boulder County was light Aug. 23rd and 24th. Basically, just the core species for this time of year: Wilson's Warbler, presumed Brewer's Sparrow, and dwindling numbers of Chipping Sparrows. And a cool Red-breasted Nuthatch. Details: http://tiny.cc/ojbox 3. Just out of curiosity, anybody got good, credible flight calls of MacGillivray's Warbler? That one has me somewhat flummoxed, I haveta say. 4. Recent postings from Jay Withgott and Jim Danzenbaker. Great stuff! And, now, for a brief proclamation from my soapbox. I assume that with nocturnal flight calls, as with seemingly all other matters ornithological, we shouldn't think of the phenomenon in simple "East-vs.-West" terms. Our continent has a fundamental three-part division, at least ornithologically speaking: (1) East and North; (2) Interior West; and (3) Pacific Slope. Not that anyone around here has been guilty of declaring otherwise! But I figured I'd nip it in the bud, just in case. All best, Ted Floyd (still waiting for just a single, stinkin' Catharus thrush...) --- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding --- Please support the American Birding Association: Click on http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abaoutreach Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: http://www.aba.org -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html -- -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
[nfc-l] Nocturnal migration, Boulder County, Colorado, Aug. 23-25
Hello, all. 1. With light north-northeast winds and decent cloud cover, the pre-dawn night flight earlier today, Tuesday, Aug. 25th, over Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado, was the best thus far this season. (There's something special about the exact date of Aug. 25th here in Boulder County.) Anyhow, details at http://tiny.cc/r13NJ 2. Detectable nocturnal migration over Boulder County was light Aug. 23rd and 24th. Basically, just the core species for this time of year: Wilson's Warbler, presumed Brewer's Sparrow, and dwindling numbers of Chipping Sparrows. And a cool Red-breasted Nuthatch. Details: http://tiny.cc/ojbox 3. Just out of curiosity, anybody got good, credible flight calls of MacGillivray's Warbler? That one has me somewhat flummoxed, I haveta say. 4. Recent postings from Jay Withgott and Jim Danzenbaker. Great stuff! And, now, for a brief proclamation from my soapbox. I assume that with nocturnal flight calls, as with seemingly all other matters ornithological, we shouldn't think of the phenomenon in simple "East-vs.-West" terms. Our continent has a fundamental three-part division, at least ornithologically speaking: (1) East and North; (2) Interior West; and (3) Pacific Slope. Not that anyone around here has been guilty of declaring otherwise! But I figured I'd nip it in the bud, just in case. All best, Ted Floyd (still waiting for just a single, stinkin' Catharus thrush...) --- Ted Floyd Editor, Birding --- Please support the American Birding Association: Click on http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=884482 to search the internet. Check out the American Birding Association on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22934255714 Check out the American Birding Association on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abaoutreach Please visit the website of the American Birding Association: http://www.aba.org -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html --
