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Crossbills of south-east Scotland (1 Viewer)

Acanthis

Well-known member
Here's some sonagrams of crossbills recorded in my area of Scotland.
I originally posted these on the Lothians and Borders birdgroups but Birdspotter suggested it would be worthwhile posting them here.

So lets start with British or 1A Crossbill, flight (Monynut Forest, Berwickshire. NT 689 670, 26th Nov. 06) and excitement calls (Monynut Forest 18th Feb. 07).
 

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Next: Parakeet or 1B Crossbill flight calls only (Cademuir Plantation, Peebles. NT 242 379, 2nd Dec. 06) . I've yet to get a decent recording of their excitement calls.
 

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Glip or 4E Crossbill. Again so far only got decent recordings of flight calls (Monynut Forest. 26th Nov. 06) . Note the characteristic 'tick' shape.
 

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Scarce Crossbill (Monynut Forest 26th Nov. 06).
This was a surprise. According to the Sound Approach this form has only been recorded in the Benelux countries, but no doubt travels far and wide like the rest. Only recorded once and that was just the excitement call, the flight calls were lost amongst loads of Parakeets and British Crossbills when the large flock took off.
 

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Your right of course! I'll edit in the dates. I'll also add soundfiles after doing some file conversion.

Cheers
 
Ok now for some soundfiles - mp3s i'm afraid. Can't upload wavs. Lets start with flight calls as these are heard most often. For dates and sites see above.
 

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Excitement calls or 'toops'. I'll need to try and find some for Glips and Parakeets too.
 

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Lastly, a little snatch of crossbill song - type unknown. Incidentally you can hear near the end of the clip the flight call of another bird, a Parakeet Crossbill.
 

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Wow that's excellent!!

One of the calls"Glip" sounds like the birds I have been getting the most

Thats interesting! All I've had recently are Brits. I must get over to Harperrig. If you can get some Glip excitement calls it would be great to upload them here for comparison :t:
 
Nice sonograms, and an excellent range of calls too. Almost all of mine have been parakeets, and I find most of them reluctant to give excitement calls.
 
Thats interesting! All I've had recently are Brits. I must get over to Harperrig. If you can get some Glip excitement calls it would be great to upload them here for comparison :t:

They may or not be Glip, only I think they sound like my birds.

I would upload them on here, if I could only work out how to use ******* Audacity;)

I am amazed at the number of different types you have managed to record, I would have thought 2-3 at the most in this area, but 5 different one's, including Scarce which was a real surprise as you say.

Just goes to show if no body's looking, then no body's finding.

Keep up the good work.:t:
 
They may or not be Glip, only I think they sound like my birds.

I would upload them on here, if I could only work out how to use ******* Audacity;)

I am amazed at the number of different types you have managed to record, I would have thought 2-3 at the most in this area, but 5 different one's, including Scarce which was a real surprise as you say.

Just goes to show if no body's looking, then no body's finding.

Keep up the good work.:t:

Errm..Calum, there's only 4 but you are right though. I managed to record a Wandering or 2B Crossbill in Soutra back in december. Like Scarce its not on my crossbill 'form' list since both were singles hidden in flocks of other types and only Ided later from sonagrams. These are the only individuals of those types I've ever come across.
At the end of 06 when I started this lark it was mostly Parakeets and British with the occasional Glip up to september 07. Now the Parakeets seem to have disappeared leaving a majority British population, at least in Soutra. Need to find out what's going on elsewhere.

Don't worry, once you get your kit problems sorted out you'll record just as many and more :t:. And if you happen to get a Bohemian or 2-bar over at Harperrig don't keep it to yourself!!
 
Nice sonograms, and an excellent range of calls too. Almost all of mine have been parakeets, and I find most of them reluctant to give excitement calls.

Hi, I know what you mean about trying to induce calls. I find the settled pairs really unforthcoming. I usually get fed up and move on looking for wandering flocks. They're much easier.
Is it still mostly Parakeets with you up on Deeside? Maybe that's where all our Lammermuir birds have gone.
The forests I normally check are Sitka Spruce plantation ~1000 ft above sea level. Actually Monynut also has a lot of Hybrid larch and small amounts of several other conifer species. Soutra(Armet) is younger and has less variety. What kind of woods are you finding the Parakeets in?
 
Errm..Calum, there's only 4 but you are right though. I managed to record a Wandering or 2B Crossbill in Soutra back in december. Like Scarce its not on my crossbill 'form' list since both were singles hidden in flocks of other types and only Ided later from sonagrams. These are the only individuals of those types I've ever come across.
At the end of 06 when I started this lark it was mostly Parakeets and British with the occasional Glip up to september 07. Now the Parakeets seem to have disappeared leaving a majority British population, at least in Soutra. Need to find out what's going on elsewhere.

Don't worry, once you get your kit problems sorted out you'll record just as many and more :t:. And if you happen to get a Bohemian or 2-bar over at Harperrig don't keep it to yourself!!

Yep, I stand corrected, there are only four.

I can only think in my defence that due to having a babe as a maths teacher at school, I spent the whole of the lesson in a trance, thus was never any good at maths.

I have spent the whole afternoon in front of the computer looking at Audacity, I thought I had worked it out, as I managed to save some calls, however when I had a look at them in Ravenlite the files had some how changed from WAV's to AUF's whatever that is, thus Ravenlite could not read them.
I then looked at some more recording's in WAV in Ravenlite and these seemed fine, except they weren't edited so were sometimes 1-2 minutes long.
The bright side however is these recording's showed up as a sonogram so I am getting there, and from what I can see from at least one of them looks very promising.

cheers

I was quite good at curves in maths though, strange that!!3:)
 
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Is it still mostly Parakeets with you up on Deeside?

From the limited amount of recording I've done, within a fairly small area of Deeside, it is almost exclusively Parakeets I've managed to record. I don't know what Griffin and others have found in other parts of Deeside. I did manage a single Glip within a small flock of Parakeets just before Christmas, and this ? possible Parrot just after Christmas. I've also recorded the call attached below a couple of times. I'm not sure what it is.

What kind of woods are you finding the Parakeets in?

Most of the plantations around here are Scots Pine dominated, with smaller amounts of Larch, Spruce and Douglas Fir. Whenever I've found Parakeets feeding, it's always been in a larch tree, even if there is just a single larch in a sea of pine.
 

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Here's some sonagrams of crossbills recorded in my area of Scotland.
I originally posted these on the Lothians and Borders birdgroups but Birdspotter suggested it would be worthwhile posting them here.

So lets start with British or 1A Crossbill, flight (Monynut Forest, Berwickshire. NT 689 670, 26th Nov. 06) and excitement calls (Monynut Forest 18th Feb. 07).

Hi Sandy,

The one on the left looks \/\/ to me so I would consider Fc4 ?

Lindsay
 
Hi Sandy,

The one on the left looks \/\/ to me so I would consider Fc4 ?

Lindsay

Aha! I wondered when somebody who really knows what they're talking about would come along and show me what an overconfident fool I've been. ;) 8-P

So you don't need a long tall final upstroke for an Fc4? I had another example which was midway between SA's Fc4 and my false Brit. I wish I'd gotten some Ecs. :C

Any chance you could post a sonagram of a real 1A?

Cheers B :)
 
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