Sitka Nature

Thanks to some helpful folks for responding to a help request, I now realize that the otter/mystery calls are Marbled Murrelets. I’m pretty sure that the straight chirping calls are otters, but the other more gull-like calls are murrelets. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it before, I guess I did not expect to have them flying over the house.

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Marbled Murrelets: The first Marbled Murrelet calls I noticed were just before 3am. They continued on sporadically through at last 5am. It’s not really known why Marbled Murrelets fly inland during the night throughout the year, though in the summer they do so to visit their nests.
Download Marbled Murrelet 1
Download Marbled Murrelet 2
Download Marbled Murrelet 3

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Mystery Call: There’s probably not much hope for figuring out this call. The first call is obscured somewhat by a Marbled Murrelet call, and a second call is much fainter.
Mystery Call

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Duck Flyover: I think I’ll try to start paying more attention to the sound of ducks flying in order to see if I can figure out species by the sound of their flight.
Duck Flyover

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Raven Calls: Another Raven vocalization that I’ve not caught on recording previously.
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I did not hear much through the steady rain. There was an otter a little before 4am, then more otters and mystery calls between 5 and 5:30. One of the mystery calls was the shorebird-like calls. There was more than one call this time, but none of them were as loud or clear as the clip I posted a few days ago.

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River Otter Mystery Calls: I’m still puzzled by these River Otter/Mystery Calls. In this clip, it seems as though there’s an echo effect smearing the call somewhat, though in the very last call, there is not really any echo. It’s hard for me tell for sure if the final call is the same as the earlier ones, though it seems like maybe it is.
Download River Otter Mystery Calls

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River Otter and Mystery Calls: Recorded only 5 minutes or so after the previous clip, this starts out with what I’m pretty confident is a River Otter. About halfway through, the calls change to the mystery calls that sound kind of like gulls to me.
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Early Rising Bald Eagle: This Bald Eagle probably spent the night in a tree behind the house. It was up early on a rainy Sunday, though given the time change last night, it was not as early as it might have otherwise seemed. Recorded at 06:37.
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Another quiet night. The first calls I noticed were not until a little after 5am, when there were a few River Otter chirps. There were more an hour later. A little surprising was a series of Western Screech-owl calls around 7:30am that lasted for a couple of minutes. It was no longer dark at that time, and there had already been some other birds calling. I’ve included 40 seconds or so of it.

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Western Screech-owl: This sounded close enough that it must have been in one of the trees near the house. Recorded at 07:34.
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Raven: This is a Raven call variant that I hadn’t recorded yet. These calls went on like this for over 10 minutes, though this clip is not nearly so long.
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Fairly quiet night. There were some distant owl calls around 5:50 this morning, but nothing clear enough to inspire me to upload a clip. Mostly I’m trying to keep track of how often the owls vocalize. The wind and rain make it hard to say for sure, but it seems like a sizable proportion of days when it’s quiet enough to hear owls without them be right in the back yard, I do catch one at some point during the night.

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Mystery Call: This is a very brief single call. It doesn’t sound at all familiar to me.
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Bird Calls: This clip consists of the last 30 seconds of Winter Wren calls that lasted for close to two minutes. I’m not sure whether it was alarming something or not. Also of interest is the bird that starts calling in the last few seconds. I think it is a Chestnut-backed Chickadee, but I am not sure about that.
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