weather
Cloud 8/8 overnight. No rain. c 10°c Wind 2/3 w/sw
nocmig
Good overnight passage of Redwing with 76 calls recorded between 19:40 and 07:50. There were calls recorded in each hour of the night with the exception of 03:00 – 05:00. Two peaks of calls – before midnight and more marked in the hour before dawn with 38 calls after 06:00. I’ve not looked at this systematically before but have noticed a similar pattern of peaks in calls after dusk and before dawn in previous years. There ould be several reasons for this: Are birds more vocal at the start and end of the night’s journey? Do the birds fly higher during the middle of the night, out of range of the recorder and are only detectable when they are closer to the ground at the start and end of the night? Do bird depart in flocks but spread out during flight and regroup at dawn making them more vocal / detectable? Are they drawn to certain features on the ground such as well lit areas at dawn again making them more detectable at this time from a garden? Intriguing. There is some evidence that more thrush calls are detected over lit up parts compared to darker parts of the same area (1).
Nocmig totals
- Redwing 76
- Snipe 1
- Goldcrest 1
- Gillings, S. and Scott, C. (2021), Nocturnal flight calling behaviour of thrushes in relation to artificial light at night. Ibis, 163: 1379-1393. https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.12955