...Both visits were in the same area of Wekiva/Seminole St. Forest. In the forest habitat, which included many dead large pines, I heard "horn toots" that to my ear were exactly identical to many of the Choctawatchee "kent" recordings. During the first visit on 9 Dec at ~5:30pm, temp 50F, I heard the "horn toots" as a breeze was moving through the pine woods and I immediately attributed the sound to the moving rubbing dead stems of pine trees. I returned on 9 Jan and visited the same area at dawn. The air was still, the temp about 40F and I heard no "horn toots"; many piwo's, and redbellies, a few downy's but no "horn toots". After a breeze started late in the morning, I revisited a site with numerous dead large pines and the "horn toots" were commonly heard and I visually saw the swaying tree stems.
During my entire search, only at Wekiva did I hear the tree "horn toots" that sound, to my ear, exactly like many of the Choctawatchee recordings.
MDR, Fairbanks Alaska
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Mechanical "kents"
An excerpt from this ibwo.net post (the bold font is mine):
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2 comments:
"It sounds like a kent!! It's probably an Ivory-bill unless you can prove it is something else..." to paraphrase many of the true believers.
Maybe it's not a bird at all. Maybe it's mammals. Maybe it's a squeaking tree.
If it CAN be the commonplace, it almost certainly is. True believers laughed at the suggestion that Cornell's sightings may have been based on aberrant Pileateds. Now that we've seen the photos of these birds, sensible people realize that the ordinary explanation of mistaken ID is far more likely than the extraordinary explanation that the IBWO is back.
If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. Of course, it's not about common sense. It's about hope and faith.
Are tree frogs a possible source of calls? They will call infrequently during the day. They can make some very odd sounds that are nothing like their mating calls, and wouldn't be recognized by most people. I'm not aware of any commercially available recordings that cover those calls well.
Anybody out there know an expert on tree frog voices?
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