Yesterday morning, 9/27/09, Andrew Thornton and I listened to an impressive Bobolink flight here in NE Florida.?
We arrived at the Guana Lake Dam north of St. Augustine at 6:20am and stopped estimating "night flight calls" at 6:50am.? During this time, we estimated that Bobolinks were calling at a rate of 3-5/second.? At no point during this time were they calling at a rate of less than 1/second and 8+ calls/second were maintained for a few short periods.? As dawn broke, the calls dropped off significantly, but we observed several high flying flocks of Bobolinks throughout the morning and could often hear more while in the woods.? Bobolinks have been the dominant night flight call in this area for about 3 weeks now.? What was just as interesting to me as the number of Bobolinks were the lack of other species calling in the flight.? During the same time period we only heard: 4 Swainson's Thrush 1 Veery 1 Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1 Summer Tanager (presumed, I have little experience with this call) 2?presumed warbler?seeps We thought we might just be having a difficult time hearing other species over the Bobolinks and that may have been true with the warbler notes.? The thrush calls still stood out amongst the chorus. Has anyone else heard a?large predawn flight?with such a lack of diversity?? Most of my?listening has been inland in the mid-Atlantic and while I've had plenty of thrush-dominated mornings, I've never?had a single?species compose so much of the calls.? ? Thanks, Matt Hafner St. Augustine, FL -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES Archives: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
