ML234545261
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult Female - 1; Adult Male - 1
- Behaviors
- Courtship, display, or copulation
- Sounds
- Call; Duet
- Playback
- Playback not used
Media notes
Recorded at 20:38. Third episode of apparent mating. Male toots, one female solicitation call, female toots, and male sounds probably during mating.
Observation details
Heard courting and mating. We saw the female's head at the nest hole, where she was visible for many minutes; saw silhouettes of the male and female in flight; and heard a variety of vocalizations from both birds. We first heard the male toot spontaneously at about 19:15 before we arrived in the nest area; this was nearly 30 minutes before sunset. We heard the male tooting from an apparent roost roughly 20-30 meters from the nest before sunset but brief attempts to see the bird failed. It appeared that the male was high in a white fir or Jeffrey pine. We heard the male tooting from one direction while we were looking at the other bird in the nest cavity. Subsequent recordings confirmed that the bird in the cavity was the female. Recordings using a parabolic dish documented female solicitation calls at least as early at 19:54, or about 10 minutes after sunset, although they were faint and we did not notice them by ear until later. The nest hole is roughly 12-15 meters above ground level on the east side of a dead white fir, and due to its size, the nest may be in an old northern flicker hole. Mating sounds started at 20:03 when the female flew out to the male and they copulated roughy 50-70 meters east of the nest. We heard at least three episodes of apparent mating at 20:03, 20:31, and 20:38; the second and third occurred in the immediate vicinity of the nest, based on where we heard the sounds originate (conditions by that time were too dark for us to see the birds near the nest with the naked eye or with binoculars). Sound files below document mating at 20:31 and 20:38. Lance also has a recording of the mating sounds at 20:03, but they're adversely affected by loud handling noise while attempting to aim the parabolic dish, so we didn't upload that file. One of the recordings also appears to document food delivery by the male to the female. The male was still vocalizing when we left at about 21:00, but by the time we reached the Angeles Crest Highway a few minutes later, we were no longer able to hear the birds, either because the vocalizations stopped, or because their volume was too low for us to hear. Additional comments appear below with each photo and audio recording.
Technical information
- Recorder
- Sony PCM-M10
- Microphone
- Sennheiser ME62
- Accessories
- Teinga 22 inch parabola mounted on a tripod.
- Original file size
- 3.97 MB