2018 Nocmig Review

2018 was my first full year nocmigging here in Pulborough. For a bit of an intro to it all, check out my blog post from earlier in the year.

It took me a while to get into the swing of it in the spring but once up and running the year produced a nice selection of species from 57 nights' recording. Obvious highlight was the Yellow-browed Warbler on 8th October but other bits of note were Common Scoter, Brent Goose, Bewick's Swan, White-fronted Goose and a reasonable selection of waders including patch scarcities such as Oystercatcher and Whimbrel. Also noteworthy was the sensational movement of Dunlin on 15th/16th November with at least 147 calls from a minimum of 39 birds.

I was a bit late getting started with recording again in the autumn due to the very worthwhile distraction of my wedding, so missed out on the chance of getting an Ortolan Bunting in what seemed like another good passage of them. Hopefully now I've got the hang of it all I'll be able to hit the ground running in 2019 and record more frequently.

Check out the table below for the full list - note that some species such as Barn Owl, Skylark and Moorhen are mostly likely to be local birds but have been included in here for posterity and completeness. I've tried where possible to omit birds that were clearly just piping up in the dawn chorus nearby such as Chiffchaff, House Sparrow or Woodpigeon.

Nocmig gold - YBW!

I've been nocmigging pretty much every other night so far this month, weather permitting, which means I've inevitably ended up with a bit of a backlog of recordings to go through. A dark and rainy evening last Sunday provided the perfect opportunity to do a bit a of catching up and I set about working my way through the night of the 8th/9th.

A nice and clear Water Rail was a good start but there wasn't a huge amount else of note until an odd little 'V' shape at 23:25hrs caught my eye. Clearly rather quiet, I initially took it to be a slightly odd Redwing call, but then the penny dropped. I checked on Xeno-canto and, sure enough, the recordings and sonograms on there proved that mine was a perfect match for Yellow-browed Warbler. Given the numbers in the country at this time of year I suppose it's inevitable that many must fly straight over at night, but it's still quite extraordinary to imagine this tiny little bird calling as it cruised over Pulborough. A Sussex, Pulborough and garden tick triple - or at least it would have been had I not been asleep at the time!

Sonogram of the YBW over Pulborough and one from Xeno-canto to compare (below)

And here's the Water Rail from earlier in the night

Pulborough, late September

Well, what a quiet September that was. The continuing low water levels and an almost total absence of easterlies didn’t help and I spectacularly managed to get through the month without a single patch year tick. It's been good to see some signs of the seasons changing though with a few Wigeon around now and the welcome return of at least two Marsh Harriers, again a regular sight quartering over the Brooks. The bulk of the hirundines and summer passerines cleared out pretty sharpish towards the end of the month, meaning we are now in that rather odd limbo period as we await the arrival of most of the wintering ducks and thrushes.

The month ended with a bang for some though as lucky regular Paul messaged me first on Saturday evening while I was in London informing me of two Great Egrets on the North Brooks and then again Sunday afternoon asking what looks like a Little Egret with a yellow bill that hangs around cows... Cattle Egret of course! Evidently two were briefly on the North Brooks that morning before flying east. Particularly galling that one as they would have been a Pulborough tick and also because I was actually on site that morning! Fingers crossed there'll be more to come, given how many are in the country at the moment.

One of the two Cattle Egrets on the 30th (photo: Paul)

The two Great Egrets on the North Brooks on the 29th (photo: Paul)

Now we’re past the equinox and the nights are growing longer than the days, before and after work birding time is limited so it’s full on nocmig season again! I put the microphone out most nights in the last week of September and was rewarded with my third Common Scoter of the year on the 22nd, the first Redwing of the season (25th) and another Oystercatcher (28th). I'm excited to see what else I manage to pick up in the coming weeks, this being my first full autumn of nocmigging.

Common Scoter

Redwing

Oystercatcher

Recent nocmiggings

I've been getting back into the swing of more regular nocturnal recording this month, and have tried to get the mic out at least a couple of times a week - though the blustery conditions the past few days have been less than conclusive but at least gave a welcome break in which to catch up on earlier recordings.

Not a huge amount of note from the four nights recording so far in September aside from a Spotted Flycatcher on the 14th - a nocmig first - and the only wader recorded so far this month in the form of a Dunlin on the 13th.

14th/15th was certainly the liveliest one this month with a Dunnock and several probable Robin/Flycatcher calls indicating a busy night for passerine movement. At least seventeen calls that night remain unidentified though, frustratingly, which seems a common problem in the nocmig community at this time of year in particular.

The recorder was out again last night as the wind finally abated for a few hours so it will be interesting to see what that one delivers.

All data now on Trektellen.

 Bit of a head-scratcher this one but my first thought was Dunlin and others agreed. Not their usual call but certainly within their range. I wonder if the apparent drop in pitch isn't purely caused by the doppler effect of the bird travelling at speed away from the microphone - this would also explain why the second call is lower in both pitch and volume than the first.

Pulborough, mid-August: getting busy!

Return migration has really stepped up a gear in the past few days it seems - particularly on the passerine front - and this morning at Pulborough was without doubt the best visit of the autumn so far. After the disappointment of missing Clive Hope's Pied Flycatcher a couple of weeks ago and then yet another Osprey last weekend which, from Gary Trew's description probably flew right over my house (!), one of my patch bogey birds fell at last today with a male Redstart working its way along the hedge just north of Redstart Corner.

Redstart

While I was watching it I heard a Yellow Wagtail fly over, my first of the year and later followed by another heard only at the Hanger and a third being chased around the North Brooks by the Pied Wagtails. This species came tantalisingly close to being added to the patch year list a few days earlier with several calls recorded during my first nocmig session of the season on Monday night, but more on that later. The hedgerows were teeming with warblers today, largely Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Whitethroat and a few Willow Warblers, but also a Garden Warbler near West Mead, a Reed Warbler near Winpenny and at least five Lesser Whitethroats dotted about. Best of all though was the Tree Pipit kicking about in the Blackthorns near West Mead. Only my second record of this species here.

Tree Pipit (and Song Thrush)

There were potentially as many as ten Whinchats about with 4-5 seen on the North Brooks and the same amount on the South Brooks. Reported by others but not seen by me were two Spotted Flycatchers on the far eastern side of the reserve and three near Winpenny later in the day, and a Wheatear on the North Brooks. Good numbers of House Martins and Sand Martins, with the latter mostly streaming straight through while the former were lingering and feeding over the site. These inevitably attracted the attentions of a Hobby which plunged straight through the middle of a flock above the path down to Nettleys. A juvenile Marsh Harrier was again doing the rounds - I saw it from Redstart Corner and later from the visitor centre but others also saw it quartering over the North Brooks. Other than sixty-odd Lapwing there wasn't too much of note on the wader front today, with just two Dunlin and three Green Sandpipers on the North Brooks. Indeed it's been a little quiet on that side of things lately with nothing majorly noteworthy since my Wood Sand a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully September will bring a few more goodies.

View from 'the Obs' (attic) during one of the recent storms

Interestingly my first nocmigging attempts of the autumn this week have provided a bit more wader variety, in particular my first recorded Whimbrel(s) over the house, with six calls from an indeterminable number of birds recorded very early Tuesday morning. Other bits of note include the aforementioned Yellow Wags, a Common Sandpiper, a Little Ringed Plover and a Snipe. Quite a few strange tics and whistles too, particularly on Monday night - most of them as yet unidentified. Ortolan Bunting next?...

Listening in the darkness: New adventures in nocmigging

It's been a while since I did one of these and, since I'm now living in Pulborough, I thought I'd get a new blog up and running for occasional updates on my birding in this area.

I'm loving living here so far: the new garden list is already on 101 (Temminck's Stint the latest addition, ridiculously!) and my overall Pulborough patch list is 135 (though this includes some historical ticks such as American Wigeon, Little Gull and White-fronted Goose - still no sign of the latter this winter, sadly).

The short days of winter are always hard going for any birder in full time employment and, although I'm lucky enough to work outdoors, in terms of patch birding, it's been a weekend only affair for me for the past four months. In an effort to remedy this somewhat and because I like trying new things, I've recently decided to get into 'nocmigging'. As migration is an aspect of bird study I've found particularly fascinating for some time now, I've been following a few nocturnal recorders' efforts with intrigue. Essentially, for those unfamiliar with this unusual new way of birding, it involves setting up a microphone and recording device outside overnight then analysing the spectrogram of the recording to see what bird calls were captured. With the Brooks and the River Arun now literally on my doorstep, what better way, I thought, to unlock the secrets of what flies over in the middle of the night? Judging by the results from other nocturnal recording stations around the country - the likes of Snow Bunting, Common Scoter and, famously, Ortolan Bunting, being identified flying over in the middle of the night - the answer is a hell of a lot!

Not wanting to spend a fortune on something I knew I was just testing the water at to begin with I started with a very basic set up which only cost £40 or so and produced some reasonable results. Once I was convinced this was something I wanted to do more regularly and get better recordings from, I levelled up to a HTDZ HT-81 microphone and Tascam DR-05 recorder - the same set-up recommended by Joe Stockwell in his excellent set of instructional videos - which, in total still only comes to around £120. For analysing the recording I use Audacity which is available as a free download. Again, see Joe's videos for a bit of tuition on how to use this.

So, let's cut to the chase and talk about some of the things I've recorded so far - some more expected than others. I was a little late starting in late autumn to experience the peak of thrush migration but nonetheless recorded decent numbers of Redwing and Song Thrush over in late November and early December. One thing I'm finding already is you quite quickly begin to get your eye in for what's an interesting call, and even start to recognise certain species' calls just from the shape on the spectrogram. Here's a Redwing, for example, with its distinctive downward slanting wedge-shaped 'seeep' call:

Redwing

And here's a Song Thrush with its staccato spike 'tsip!':

Song Thrush (the lower pitch calls just after each thrush call is a Greylag Goose)

Here's a Common Snipe from 29th November - sounded like it almost took the top off the microphone it was so low!

Snipe

Just the other week it was good to get my first Coot - a bit of a blue riband species for nocmiggers, and surprisingly scarce locally I've found, despite the Arun and the Brooks being so close to home.

Coot

With the Arun Valley being a well-known wintering ground for a small number of Bewick's Swans, this was one I quietly hoped I might pick up on my recordings. Sure enough, on 19th January, it happened! Sadly this was when I was still getting to grips with my new recording set-up so the sound quality is not very good, but you get the idea.

Bewick's Swan

Less expected was this single Brent Goose which called a couple of times at 23:40hrs on 10th January.

Brent Goose

Other than that, so far it's mostly been the general background hubbub from the Brooks such as Lapwing, Wigeon and Canada Goose, with the odd Tawny Owl, Little Owl and local dog thrown in for good measure.

The first real curveball came on 7th February though when I recorded this single, somewhat puzzling call at 06:08hrs.

??

My first thought was Snow Bunting, even though it didn't sound quite right. Others on Twitter suggested Lapland or Skylark. Simon Gillings from the BTO provided some valuable input, even going to the trouble of producing these comparison images of various species' spectrograms.

My mystery call/Snow Bunting/Lapland Bunting, for comparison. As Simon has suggested,
the shape of my call doesn't seem right for either, although this could be due in part to the distance
of the bird from the microphone 

Ultimately, he said he's not entirely sure it's Lapland or Snow Bunting; he did suggest possibly Bullfinch but neither of us are sure that's quite right either. One that got away I suppose, but an enticing taster for what's to come as spring approaches - I can almost hear the Whimbrel calling in my headphones as I type this!