Dawn Chorus Update #3: Establishing Territory on Stewart Mountain

[Stephen Chase]

Hi again Whatcom Birds,

Wow - what a wet week! It's been a while since I've been able to get out for a dawn chorus walk. Today I stretched my legs with a 6-mile hike up the west slope of Stewart Mountain, accessed via the Y Road Trailhead. Admittedly, much of the area is somewhat of a monoculture, good for countless Pacific Wrens, Varied Thrushes, and American Robins but not much else. But interspersed between, there are habitat niches where the biodiversity is rich, particularly on some of the plateaus about halfway up the mountain.

My goal was to see how many Northern Pygmy Owls I could hear. I've heard four tooting here during a morning walk years ago, so I hoped to top that number. (Spoiler alert: I "only" heard three.) 

I began hiking at 6:10am, well before first light at 6:39. I forgot my flashlight, and it was cloudy, so it was a dark start! Within 50 yards, I had my first bird for the day: a Northern Saw-whet Owl tooting just south of the parking lot! Saw-whets are winter-only birds in the Whatcom lowlands, so this individual wasn't establishing territory, but just warming his vocal chords. His quick, incessant toots contrast with the slower, spaced-out toots of my target Pygmy Owls. A few steps later, I could hear two distant Barred Owls caterwauling. About 10 minutes up the hill, I heard my first of three Pygmy Owls. Three owl species to start the day; what a hoot!

By first light, I was just about up at the first plateau, and the birds were singing! Varied Thrushes, American Robins, Spotted Towhees, and Pacific Wrens dominated the soundscape. Between them I heard Mourning Doves and Band-tailed Pigeons cooing, along with singing Brown Creepers, Hutton's Vireos, Purple Finches, Song Sparrows, and Dark-eyed Juncos! What a treat to the ears! I collected two nice audio recordings with my cell phone, which you can hear by clicking the link below. (Want to record birds yourself? See below!*) I counted 37 Pacific Wrens in total, many of them singing males with an associating mate. I also found male-female pairs of towhees, doves, robins, thrushes, and juncos. Our resident birds have established breeding territory and begun nesting - and their pre-dawn chorus is pretty exciting! Once the neotropical migrants show up...well, things might get crazy!

Here's a link to my complete checklist from this morning's hike.

In Everson,
Stephen Chase

*Interested in recording bird songs? The pros use parabolic recording dishes, but it's surprisingly easy to produce high-quality audio clips with a Smartphone. I recommend recording with a dedicated app such as Voice Record. Smartphones have several mics; the one you'll be recording from is on the bottom of the device. When recording, point the bottom of your phone toward the audio source. Avoid recording over nearby noises, such as creeks, roadways, and wind - and beware of your own shuffling and breathing! On a computer, import your recording into an audio editing program such as Audacity, normalize to -3, and trim the clip. Then export to your preferred file type; eBird prefers .WAV. If you upload to eBird's citizen science database (i.e. the Macaulay Library), you'll see a beautiful spectrogram of the audio clip; here's an example from today's checklist. If you want more detailed instructions, let me know. Enjoy!

[Mary Ann Percy]

Thanks for a great report, spectrogram, and all the info on how to best record w/ a smartphone!

Chirp, 

Mary Ann

[Michael Edson]

Yes, thanks Stephen!