Sitka Nature

A trip in mid-November interrupted my recording habit, and it took a while to get back into it. Things seem to be pretty quiet most nights, and I decided to collapse a few of the highlights from the few nights in November I recorded but did not yet post.

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A Chestnut-backed Chickadee and Red-breasted Nuthatch trade calls. This was one of the last times I heard a nuthatch around the house, though I have heard them elsewhere in town, since. Recorded the morning of 11 November.

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After my return, the Bald Eagles seemed to be the first birds to greet the day. Some mornings they are perched in the trees right behind the house. Recorded morning of 29 November.

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The night of the 29-30 November, was a busy one for Marbled Murrelets. There are two clips on this recording, the first one sounds like the bird was quite close, and if I’m interpreting the sound correctly, there’s the smear of an echo with it. The second was from 10 or 15 seconds later, more distant. Perhaps the same bird on a return flight? Recorded at 03:28 am.

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Chestnut-backed Chickadees are reputed to be cheerful even in foul weather. This one didn’t seemed to have its spirits dampened by the chilly November rain.

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Ravens make a wide variety of different calls. On this recording there are three different clips with 4 different types of calls in the foreground (and another in the far background). Perhaps some day I’ll come up with descriptive names for the different ones I record. Recorded morning of 30 November.

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More Raven calls, these from the morning of 1 December. This clip features what I might call the frog croak call as well as the more typical caw.

I still run into the occasional late fall mushroom as the temperatures have been dropping. I liked the lantern-like effect of the light through the gills of this one. I’m not sure what species it is.

I have 4 nights of window recordings I need to get published, but that probably won’t happen until sometime next week.

It has been chilly the last couple of days, with partly cloudy skies overnight, but I still was a little surprised to see how much of the surface of Swan Lake was covered in ice. It was thin ice, though Mallards were able to land on it without breaking through. At this rate, perhaps it will be another winter like last, where the lake froze up at the end of November and never completely thawed until at least March or April.

Clear skies with chilly temperatures made for a nice quiet night, weather-wise. Except for a distant eagle calling at 2:30, the only thing I heard until nearly daylight was River Otters chirping. The started about 2:35 and continued through almost 4. They were so faint for much of that time, I suspect in other weather conditions, I would not have caught them. Once it started getting light, I did pick up more calls, as expected. Ravens led off the morning dialog with the first calls at 6:35. About 10 minutes later, the first Bald Eagle added its voice. I was treated to a Trumpeter Swan flyby a few minutes before 7. It must not have been too close, as I couldn’t hear the feather whistling, but the calls were fairly distinctive. I also picked up a couple of other new species for these recordings, a Hair Woodpecker and Dark-eyed Juncos.

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Trumpeter Swan: At first I was not even sure this was an animal call. After a couple of listens I realized it sounded like a swan, and a quick check of the Birds of Alaska CD confirmed it. Download Trumpeter Swan

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Hairy Woodpecker: I am not absolutely sure about this call, but I’m confident that it’s a woodpecker. Although it seems clear the woodpecker must be flying from left to right, the wingbeats that are heard in this clip are probably from a Raven, not the woodpecker.
Download Hairy Woodpecker

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Dark-eyed Juncos: These juncos were getting after each other a bit. In recent days I have been realizing that I have not seen many Dark-eyed Juncos around lately. I’m not sure why that is, but apparently they’ve returned to the neighborhood for at least one morning.
Download Dark-eyed Juncos