ML231531691
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult Male - 1
- Sounds
- Song
- Playback
- Playback used
Media notes
Song after limited playback by a male Mexican Whip-Poor-Will recorded by Curtis A. Marantz on 5 May 2020 in Noble Canyon in the Cleveland National Forest, San Diego County, California. When recorded at 10:47 pm, the bird was about 40 meters away at roughly eyelevel, but midway up trees on the far side of the canyon, yet the stream noise in this particular location was not too bad. The bird was unseen when the recording was made following limited playback used to elicit song after it had gone quiet about a half-hour earlier. We did see this bird briefly in flight after the recording was made, and it clearly had large white markings in the tail, indicative of a male. The location was along the Noble Canyon Trail about 800 meters below its crossing at Pine Creek Road [32° 53’ 25.4” N, 116° 28’ 50.0”], and in a steep-walled canyon with a running stream and apparently a mixed Jeffrey Pine and Canyon Live Oak woodland that had a closed canopy in most places and a mesic aspect, but given that we saw the location only in the dark, it was difficult to know the finer details. There was an essentially full moon 40º in the eastern sky, clear skies, calm conditions, and 47º F when I departed the site (on the basis of the thermometer in my vehicle). Recording was made using the low-cut filters on both the MKH-20 and the recorder, but without the attenuators on either the microphone or recorder. This bird was initially found the previous evening by David Hogan, when it was a short distance farther up the canyon in what was likely more open woodland.
Observation details
We initially heard this bird from the driveway right about 9:00 pm, but it was quite distant and down the canyon. Several of us then worked our way down the Noble Canyon Trail to where we were much closer to the bird, and where I was able to get a few reasonable recordings of the bird on both sides of the stream above what appeared to be a relatively steep canyon. Nunn and I saw this bird briefly in flight overhead, and generally in silhouette against the bright sky, when I noted that it was a relatively large bird, seemingly approaching the size of a nighthawk, and with a generally similar structure that combined a large head, a short neck, and elongate body, relatively long wings that tapered distally despite having somewhat rounded wingtips, and a long tail that was slightly flared and either square-tipped or slightly rounded corners. The flight was quiet and rather fluttering with short slides. Although the bird appeared to be generally quite dark overall, we once noted bright white flashes of moderate size that Nunn was confident were in the tail, but I was less certain about their location. This bird, which was was found the previous evening by David Hogan, provided only the second record for San Diego County record (in which the previous record involved a bird one heard calling near Julian on 8 July 1971, American Birds 25:907).
Technical information
- Recorder
- Nagra ARES-BB+
- Microphone
- Sennheiser MKH-20
- Accessories
- Roché 30” fiberglass parabola
- Original file size
- 12.78 MB