Night Flight Calls (Sep 10): Boulder County

[Bryan Guarente]

Went out for a little bit at 10pm to see what I might hear since there is a low cloud deck (pretty hard to come by in CO overnight this time of year) and the low-level winds are out of the "northish" direction.  The scattered showers are making things a little more concentrated I am guessing.  You can see areas on the radar imagery tonight where the precipitation is traveling northward, while there are "non-precipitation" echoes that are traveling another direction around the same ring of the radar.  This is a pretty good indication of biological targets (birds, bats, insects, or other).  

Went out and heard 14 passerine sp. (seeps, tseeps, sweeps, zeeps), 4 Chipping Sparrows, and 1 Swainson's Thrush in 15 minutes of listening.  Not bad.  If you are able, go out some time tonight and listen from a quiet area.  With the low-level clouds, it makes it a lot easier to hear things as the sound reflects off the clouds and the birds will be lower anyway instead of flying through the clouds.  

 

Bryan Guarente
Meteorologist/Instructional Designer
The COMET Program
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, CO

[Ted Floyd]

They're still going at it right now (ca. 3:45 a.m., Wednesday morning, Sept. 11th) over Lafayette, Boulder County. Low cloud ceiling, winds out of the northeast, light rain. I'm hearing some Vesper Sparrows, I believe, and there was a Swainson's Thrush a little while ago.

Ted Floyd

tedfl...@hotmail.com

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado