Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Playback
- Not specified
Observation details
Absolute minimum, probably as many as 60. Recordings. Heavily overcast sky at sunset and birding immediately after vision therapy so I didn't try particularly hard to ID swallows visually, and from a distance I assumed they were mostly Tree Swallows. But as I settled down on the dock for 30+ minutes, a very slight drizzle set in and then their characteristic raspy calls were seemingly everywhere-- including swarming high above the dock and skimming over the water. Several passed so close to me that even with my awful visual processing/tracking skills I could see brown backs and murky throats. Comparatively I never saw any Tree Swallows and only heard their liquid chatter a couple of times and that too only because I was listening very very closely for them. I stopped counting individual rough-wingeds after 15, and just counted swallows by 10s (70-120 total, only because there was such variation in height I couldn’t accurately count the distant fliers) and then I estimated a species proportion by sound. Pretty sure I’ve never before had this species in such numbers before, and most definitely have never had such a high proportion of a large swallow flock be rough-wingeds.
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 13.41 MB