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Crossbill in Angus (1 Viewer)

aythya_hybrid

real name Jonathan Dean
Hello.

Had good views of this adult male Crossbill feeding a juv in the car park at Glen Doll the other day. I thought it looked like a regular common xbill but the calls sounded a wee bit deeper than the crossbills I encountered in Norfolk a few weeks ago. Have attached two medicore pictures. Plus the link below is to a video file which shows nothing but you can hear them contact calling (above the sound of my parents having a conversation). If any crossbill boffins could confirm that these are indeed common xbill I'd be most grateful!.

I know the sound recording is awful, but I remember Linz once said even a bad recording should suffice!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YS6HbKEzwQ

thanks,
Jonathan
 

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I wouldn't get your hopes up too much. They sound like excitement calls which are lower pitched than the more commonly heard flight calls in all crossbill species.

I'm sure Linz will be able to identify them by ear but not me. Is there any way you can extract the audio from the video clip and save it as an mpeg? That way it would be possible to get a sonogram. It certainly sounds better than some recordings that I have managed to get sonograms from.
 
I agree with Paul that this is an excitement call, so not very, err, exciting. Might see if I can do some sort of sonogram thing later.
 
I've managed to get a sonogram from it, although it's not all that clear. Here's maybe the best bit of it. Only the fundamental and a bit of a harmonic show up. The fundamental seems to go down in pitch and is quite long. I guess that British might be the best bet on this, although it doesn't show any upward movement at the beginning. Anyone any other thoughts?
 

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Goodness, thanks Andrew!!
I should have made clear in my original post that it was the "jip jip" calls which I thought sounded moderately deep, but they stopped doing that before I got the camera out.

Can you remind me, which call type is "British" Crossbill?

best,
Jonathan
 
Goodness, thanks Andrew!!
I should have made clear in my original post that it was the "jip jip" calls which I thought sounded moderately deep, but they stopped doing that before I got the camera out.

Can you remind me, which call type is "British" Crossbill?

best,
Jonathan

British is a 1A using the Summers' system. To be honest I don't really know what type your bird is though!
 
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