Thanks Bill for wonderful listening and watching time! I felt we are so lucky to be in Ithaca and have such extraordinary people among our midst and great learning experience.
I managed to listen a few minutes with Bill's set up. It was great. Now I could say I heard different kinds of calls, meaning many sounded different which in the past I had difficulty in saying if it was up slurred zip or down slurred call. But now I can distinguish them. Only I need to practice a bit more listening to identify at least a few more species. I feel confident to call that I heard Gray-cheecked thrushes, Swainson's thrushes and a couple of calls sounded very similar to Dickcissel calls, but I am 100% sure that I can confidently call that those were the birds unless I also saw the spectrogram after recording them at the same time. I did record some, but they were still too high for my microphone. If I get chance I will look at them in next couple of days. Thermal camera was another great experience. Bill had set up a thermal camera with a wide screen. As the migrants passed overhead they looked like falling stars (or meteors) as they streaked across the screen. Some went almost south, some flew in circles, others came in groups of four or five birds at a time on the screen. We could even watch their wing beats! At one point two of them almost collided, but one decided that it may want to change its direction last moment. It is so amazing that these birds almost some thousand feet high could be detected so well with this camera. Every time a bird showed up on the screen, we all went "wow","oohs" and all kinds of expressions. Sometimes we watched some very fast moving creatures that might have been moths, they were like Haley's comet at its brightest! Bill also thought some of them were migrating bats! It was wonderful two hours, which was enjoyed by 12 of us! If Bill posts similar event again sometimes, make sure you go, I am going to miss rest of the night migration this year :-( Thanks again Bill. Happy Birding! Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 http://haribal.org/ http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ ________________________________ From: bounce-6322355-3493...@list.cornell.edu [bounce-6322355-3493...@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Bill Evans [wrev...@clarityconnect.com] Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 11:47 PM To: cayugabirds Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Night on the Mount Great night listening up on Mount Pleasant tonight. Surprising large flight. Most birds were high and the calls were faint to the ear but listening via the micorphone was amazing. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and Swainson's Thrush I think predonminated for us with many zeeps and tsips of warblers. We also had a thermal imager and after it cleared it became extraordinary seeing the magnitude of the flow that was actually moving over us. The wind had turned light southerly by 11PM and I would expect there will be a nice selection of new migrants about Ithaca over the weekend. Good birding to all, Bill E -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
