FreeLists / tn-bird / [tn-bird] HUGE migrant flight

[K Dean EDWARDS <kde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Birds were definitely on the move south through Knoxville
Saturday night.

After the nerve-racking sixth overtime and final escape
with victory by the Vols, I decided to sit out on the
deck for a bit.  An unbelievable number of birds could
be heard passing overhead.  I stayed out from about
12:40 to 1:20 AM during which time I heard several hundred
calling migrants heading southwest along the ridgeline.

I did a couple of 5-min counts:
from 12:51 - 12:56 AM, 35 migrants heard,
from 1:00 - 1:05 AM, 68 migrants heard!

It was a nearly constant stream of birds the whole time
I was listening.  Unfortunately, I haven't picked up
either of the new CDs out there for IDing the night
migration calls of songbirds so I couldn't ID anything
I heard but I was able to separate out 5 or 6 easily
distinguishable calls. The two most common was a
warbler-like, short, sharp chip note and a thrush-like,
fairly short `quer' call.  Another failry common type
of call was a very short trill.  There were a couple
of longer, clearly different variations on the `quer'
call as well.

If anyone out there has positive experience building
one of those flower-pot microphones, I'd love to hear
from you.  I'm hoping to put one of those together and
put it to use.

Earlier Saturday, while mowing the lawn, I had my first
migrating raptor of the fall.  An Osprey circled overhead
a few times to gain altitude then headed off southwest
along the ridgeline.  Yard bird #101.


Dean Edwards
Knoxville, TN





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