Great Tit's mimicry of Blue Tit (1 Viewer)

[01101001]

Just a word of caution. There were actually two Great Tits making that call to each other. Tit identification by call back to square one (at least for me)?

 

[01101001]

(Should be merged with Great Tits and mimicry or Great Tit Question, so please delete this thread, and I'll repost it there. Thanks in advance)

EDIT: Or, now maybe not, but I'll leave the above for reference.

 

[Mark Lew1s]

It's a known thing - e.g. see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221001451X. Doesn't make it any easier in the field though...

 

[01101001]

How does one go about it in the field though--accept a certain error rate or check every bird? I think I'd rather do the latter, but--then--I don't want to purge my checklists from (almost) all now-unconfirmed Blue Tit records.

EDIT: Done. Makes me appreciate the beauty of Blue Tits all the more now that they can't be taken for granted.

 

[01101001]

What would be the list off affected species, then?
1) Blue Tit (alarm call)
2) Marsh Tit (non-distinctive whistled calls) (from an old ID thread of mine)
3) Bullfinch (call) (from one of the threads referenced above)
4) Long-tailed Tit (some call) (from one of the threads referenced above)

 

[01101001]

(I do have the impression, rightly or wrongly so, that the first part of the rattle averages sharper and less nasal than in most Blue Tits, while the second part is often but not always longer and composed of more elements in the case of an actual Blue Tit?)

 

[Mark Lew1s]

How does one go about it in the field though--accept a certain error rate or check every bird? I think I'd rather do the latter, but--then--I don't want to purge my checklists from (almost) all now-unconfirmed Blue Tit records.

EDIT: Done. Makes me appreciate the beauty of Blue Tits all the more now that they can't be taken for granted.

I think that I’d just accept a certain (very small) amount of error. The things you hear making blue tit noises are still going to be blue tits the vast majority of the time.

 

[Jos Stratford]

How does one go about it in the field though?

Maybe over reliance on Merlin? Cut use of the app and more on field birding? Only note birds you are confident with/backed up by sighting - fairly soon error rate will decline as experience in the field increases.

 

[01101001]

Ah, no: I had Blue Tit in my identified-without-Merlin-already group (for a longer while, which made it even harder to seperate the grain from the chaff because I stopped writing down how I reached my ID conclusions)!! It will have to go to this other group in which I hold pairs such as Blackbird vs Eurasian Treecreeper. I cherished fond hopes that AI was going to save me in this case, but now I'm somehow glad it wasn't going to be that smart.

 

[raymie]

You should upload the recording of the mimicry to eBird. Maybe in the future Merlin will be able to differentiate them if it has enough of a sample size.

Also I guess I have to figure out if they'll mimic chickadees in my area.

 

[01101001]

Yes, I did upload it to Macaulay Library at least, but I'm not sure I want to flag it up for feeding to the algorithm (there's always a tiny chance that invisible Blue Tits had me set up from the start).

 

[01101001]

I'd rather go back and see if I can capture it again, but, then, this particular patch is roamed by a shabby-clothed man with a footlong black sword: he dwells in the bushes of riverine central Warsaw, by the path and was out to get me again (glad I heard him shouting today, as the wind was pretty loud and wild). I also saw a duck impaled on a pole in the area (and stopped to read the ring)--didn't it heed the warning?? Yikes

 

[pbjosh]

It’s super interesting and difficult, I find, to try to reliably separate them. I’ve seen Merlin mis-ID them once or twice in situations where I am fairly certain there’s only one bird vocalizing. But it seems Merlin has a high accuracy rate and I don’t rely on it but rather use it to try to study the confusing Tit mess, and to key in on other things I might be missing. Overall I find Merlin really useful for learning local bird vocalizations as I travel around Europe.

My local woods are crawling with both. I don’t have a good enough ear to tell when they’re mimicking vs not, but my “counts by ear” and “counts by sight” numbers tend to match well in terms of percentages. They’re both so common that I absolutely undercount both every time, and so I let it go at that. It’s interesting though and I’m still trying to get better at all their odd little noises. Fortunately these aren’t official surveys and I feel like the data quality is “good enough” for eBird. Guaranteed I’ve never over counted either 😂

Long-tailed, Coal, and Marsh Tits are less common so when I hear them I visually ID them and haven’t been caught out on those yet.

 

[01101001]

Also, Crested Tit. Merlin and BirdNET fooled by the below:

ML107028711 - Great Tit (Great) - Macaulay Library

Macaulay Library ML107028711; © Jay McGowan; Bizkaia, País Vasco, Spain

macaulaylibrary.org

Willow Tit as well (info from two other threads).

EDIT: I guess that, at this point, it's fair to assume that Great Tit is probably capable of mimicking calls of all tits & chickadees in its Western Palearctic range. Plus LTT (wonder which of the two calls or maybe both?) and Bullfinch, apparently. No data on song mimicry that I know of, yet.

 

[01101001]

They also seem to mimic Chaffinch's call note all the time and incorporate it into their alarm call (the two whistled sounds before the rough trill). Any other finches apart from this and Bullfinch?