My daughter drew this when she was about 7..... Yet another "hoodwink" to add to my collection. As usual I went to the front door at 10pm to lock up, and hung around for a few minutes in the hope of " getting something." Over the years I've had quite a panoply of bird calls that way, all sorts of owls, quite a few waders, geese and suchlike. But last night was something new. Something..yes, something .... was calling like this .. up the scale, and down again... whew whew whew whew whew and it did that about 5 times. ..then .. silence. Bah and double-Bah. I have to admit, I was stumped. I waited and waited but nothing more was heard. It wasn't very far away, it was very distinctive, but I've no idea at all what it was. Well ..the problem is, what resources have we got to track it down ? I've got lots of CDs/tapes/vinyl (!) of bird calls and songs. But .. it takes an age to go through all those... centuries ! And anyway, I can't even find many of them. Then there's the internet. But that takes ages and ages as well. What we need is a key ...... like this .. [1] Weak ............................. 2 Middling ..........................3 Loud ................................. 4 [2] Clearly separate notes 5 Continual stream of song/calls 6 [3] The bird was in flight 7 Bird stationary 8 [4] Deep calls 9 Calls not deep 10 [5] Short pauses between bursts ... Bannerman's Gobbler Long pauses between bursts ... Hardy's Crepuscular [6] Stream of calls lasting more than 2 minutes .... Spodger's Stinker Stream of calls less than 2 minutes .... Spratt's Decisive. ...... and eventually, perhaps, you will track down your hoodwink. Or. of course, not. ... but at least you're in with a chance. If any of you lot out there recognise that call, maybe you could let me know. [email protected] ... or, as a comment. Meanwhile, the magnificent music .. Noir Desir ... "Septembre en Attendant"
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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