ML619188416
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Observation details
Heard ch-bek vocalization south of the pin. Never got eyes on the bird and it seemed to be moving south. Two hours later at the same spot I did not hear it. 44.2306546, -119.7489056 . Adding a second unedited recording. Edit: Adding more of an analysis for how I came to LEFL below. I've gone through a number of HAFL/DUFL recordings and although I see how there might similarities to the first portion of the HAFL song, there is always eventually some other follow-up syllables included. This has been my field experience with HAFL as well; although they might get repetitive in a portion of their song, they normally don't stick to the same two syllables for more than a few cycles at most. I was not able to find an example of HAFL being this repetitive without moving on in their song in Macaulay. When thinking of more common birds, I can't come up with anything similarly emphatic, repetitive, and matching on the spectrogram. If there is something that matches better I would love to know so I can investigate. House Sparrow could be one, but the spectrogram doesn't match that of a LEFL, much less the bird in my recording To the point of this two syllable song, I originally got out of my car for this checklist because I saw some type of woodpecker fly across the road. I ended up hearing this emphatic, repetitive, two-syllable pattern and for periods of about a minute, for multiple periods over the duration of my time listening. While trying to pinpoint the source, I did not hear any other follow-up syllables that would be attributed to HALF or DUFL (such as "farty" sounding syllables frequent in both species songs). After lurking many DUFL songs, I believe that can be ruled out because there is never really a similar two-syllable pattern in their song and the frequencies of the song tend to stay below 6 kHz (except for the whit call) whereas the bird in my recording reaches above that. When listening to HAFL songs I see that there is a superficially similar looking "si-lick" syllable. It sounds very sweet to me though, which I didn't gather in the field or from my recording. This "si-lick" syllable is also more angled on the spectrogram, meaning it is going through these frequencies slower than a LEFL and allowing the listener to process the frequencies easier, resulting in that sweeter sounding syllable. The bird in the field and in my recording came off as sounding "flat" to me; not having much dimension to the ear and that HAFL recordings would show on a spectrogram. The first syllable of each two-part vocalization in my recording seems to be nearly vertical and spans nearly the same frequency range. The vertical nature of the first syllable of a LEFL song going through these frequencies in seemingly double the time of a HAFL leads to more of a flat sound without any dimension and is generally what I am taking away in my recording and what was heard in the field. The second syllable doesn't really seem to match other syllables of a HAFL or DUFL at all. I did not hear a burry/"farty" syllable in the field and nothing that low pitch is shown in the recording that resembles that syllable of HAFL/DUFL. Although this second syllable in a HAFL song seems to be nearly a vertical line on the spectrogram (in the checklist example below), from what I am seeing and hearing on my recording the second syllable seems to stick around 6 kHz and spread out over a slightly longer amount of time which is where I see it almost overlapping with the cricket. I think this HAFL recording by W. Douglas Robinson might be more related to a possible soundalike, but again the si-lick syllable for HAFL is more musical to my ear and much sweeter, differing from my recorded bird and the second syllable doesn't match the second syllable that is constantly repeated in my recording: https://ebird.org/checklist/S174701751 Then bringing this all back to the repetition, it seems like it would be very strange for a HAFL to never move beyond two syllables in a song during an 11 minute observation. But again, I wouldn't be surprised to learn something new. I did have a number of singing DUFLs up at Mud Springs Horse Camp where I was staying during my time there, so was primed for other singing empids.
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