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.

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.
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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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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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More mystery calls last night. Also caught a distant screech-owl a couple of different times, but did not include a clip since its calls were fairly quiet and did not really sound any different than other ones I’ve posted previously. The wind kicked up a bit as daylight came.

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Otter/Mystery Calls: I think the calls at the start of clip are from a River Otter, but I’m not sure. They sound somewhat like the mystery calls that I was thinking might be gulls from the night before. The last couple of calls near the end (after a couple of seconds without any) sound (and look on the spectrogram) qualitatively different, but that could be due to proximity and/or echo effects, I suppose.
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Otter/Mystery Calls: In this clip I’m pretty confident there are otter chirps, I do not know why a Gull would be calling along with an otter, so this clip makes me suspect that the calls I was thinking were gulls may actually be otter vocalizations.
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Duck Flight: I am pretty sure the whistling noises in this clip are from the wing feathers of flying ducks. I’m not sure what species (nor whether it is possible to tell the species by this sound). I think they may have flown a circle around the neighborhood, as the sound lasted for longer than I would expect on a direct fly-over (though I didn’t include everything in this clip).
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Mystery Call: A single call that I believe I’ve heard before (and included a clip of). It sounds rather shorebird-like, and it occured to me that it may be a Wilson’s Snipe. However, none of the recordings I have found so far of Wilson’s Snipe include a call like this.
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Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Wind: Chestnut-backed Chickadees calling while the wind blows through the trees.
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Raven Calls and Wind: I think this fast calling Raven was flying, but I’m not sure.
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