ML367039511
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult Female - 1
- Playback
- Not specified
Observation details
When I arrived, no birds were in the air. I waited for about 5 minutes. The female appeared seemingly out of nowhere, descending towards the trees. She was calling as she descended. As she approached the trees, the male emerged out of the top of the trees. They interacted in the air a bit, both vocalizing. The female flew westward and appeared to go into the field. The male circled overhead a bit. I got pictures of the male. I recorded audio on my iphone, capturing distant vocalizing by the female. The male shows light black spotting on the trailing edges of his underwing coverts. He also shows very light reddish spotting on his chest just below the reddish hood. These characteristics match the male that appeared on the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station property from April 6 to April 16 in 2020. That bird appeared to be mating with the female present at that time, but it disappeared after April 16 only to have the female reemerge with a different male. So... Now being 2021... The mystery is... How long will this bird be around? Notably, this is clearly not the male who summered and mated here in previous years. That male was banded X3 in 2019. That male had more prominent red streaking going down its lower belly. It was here with a dark morph during the summer of 2018. It returned for the summers of 2019 and 2020. That said... The earliest sighting we have of that male is April 30 of 2020. So it's at least possible that he's returning but is still on his migration. (Spoiler Alert: This early April male was last seen on April 15 in 2021. The male X3 was first seen on April 20. Presumably, X3 showed up sometime in between those two dates and encouraged this male to move on.)
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 2.81 MB