Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
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- Playback
- Not specified
Observation details
"I had a day off to rest in Salem before my continuous travels and field work again but decided to go in search for the Eastern Yellow Wagtail. A couple of visits before to this, I’m quite sure that I heard a good call of EYWA while having breakfast at the fish shop but didn’t report the observation for the lack of media, as it could turn out to be a first record for Salem. This time, I expected many Yellow Wagtails to be gaining breeding plumage and could focus to record the calls of those that look like Eastern to me. Camera was with Angeline and I didn’t want to disturb her on a Sunday. So, yeah, no camera but just went with mobile phone to record calls. The lands appeared to have been burnt by the locals probably to do farming. Some areas were ploughed and motors were running to pump water. I did a total of 35 recordings of Yellow Wagtails (which I sorted later at home) as I flushed them by walking the burnt and parched area on the right side. There was no hint of green in the vegetation. Everything was as dry as possible and all that remained was just the stalk of the plants. Yellow Wagtails were actively feeding by picking insects from the ground and those that clung to the plants’ stalk. My idea was to keep the recording on and move towards to flush them. I tried to keep it very slow because I didn’t want to make them fly away to a different and distant spot. I kept checking with my binoculars for individuals that resembled Eastern Yellow Wagtails. I found a lovely lovely specimen and knew that could be an EYWA in breeding plumage. I walked and flushed it twice but the expected individual didn’t call. Other individuals near to that bird also didn’t call when flushed. I kept pursuing them for few more times and that expected individual did call and I kind of concluded that it was EYWA only. The calls uploaded here have been cut from several minutes of recordings and sound was amplified for better hearing." - Ganeshwar.
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 311.41 KB