ID from call- Kadyny (Northern Poland) - 05/06/22 (1 Viewer)

[_pauls]

I was in northern Poland over the weekend, staying in a hotel in woodland in Kadyny not far from Gdansk. Lots of birds around but one calling that I never saw and had a distinctive call that I didn't recognise (although I am very bad at recognising bird calls!).

I made a recording on my phone which was very faint and I've boosted the sound as best I can but its not great - can anyone make out what it might be?

Thanks in advance.

 

[tconzemi]

Maybe Peregrine?

 

[KenM]

Or Green Woodpecker?

 

[CARERY]

I'm thinking Black Woodpecker

 

[_pauls]

My first thought was a woodpecker of some sort. I did see a fleeting glimpse of a woodpecker the next morning from the car... Black and white spotted but didnt look like a GSW (looked chunkier from a very quick view) . Not sure what other woodpeckers are in that area.

 

[pianoman]

Green Woodpecker my thought too

 

[foresttwitcher]

Wryneck?

 

[KenM]

Wryneck?

Wryneck sound like falcon quite shrill almost Hobby like.👍

 

[01101001]

There is no way I could know it myself, but have you tried BirdNET? It seems pretty resolute on this one.

 

[tconzemi]

There is no way I could know it myself, but have you tried BirdNET? It seems pretty resolute on this one.

Dear i
Maybe you could give us birdnet's suggestion

 

[_pauls]

Dear i
Maybe you could give us birdnet's suggestion

I've just checked it out - White-tailed eagle with a 100% probability. However that's absolute garbage!

Which is why I posted it on this forum rather than using an app or website!

I would definitely have recognised if it was a white-tailed eagle (I've spent a lot of time at falconry centres), plus it was coming from within trees surrounding the hotel and while there are white-tailed eagles in the immediate vicinity this was clearly something much smaller.

 

[pbjosh]

Sounds like Green Woodpecker to me too. Both Black and Green can give some varied calls that can overlap a bit in speed / duration but the tone sounds more like Green...

 

[Butty]

Doesn't sound like green woodpecker to me. If it is one, it certainly isn't a usual/common call.

have you tried BirdNET? It seems pretty resolute on this one.

I, too, would be interested to know what this means.

 

[01101001]

So, such was my train of thought (that is, before I knew it was supposed to be a small bird):

I saw that the suggestions were varied, so I wanted to see which one would be supported by machine learning. Then I found out that BirdNET (probably the most accurate among bird call recognisers but still, obviously, fallible) was 100% sure that it was a white-tailed eagle and assigned only negligible probabilites to other species, and I thought it interesting. I listened to the white-tailed eagle's calls from the Macaulay Library and xeno-canto, and, to my (again) untrained ear, they sounded similar, and the spectrograms also looked similar (like in this recording). The syllables of the recording in question have the higher-frequency components blurred out, which could indicate distance, but that would be fine because white-tailed eagles are high fliers. The location also seemed about right in terms of habitat.

I didn't give BirdNET's suggestion straight away because it takes an instant to check it when one has the file downloaded, and I included the link. I assumed that people would want to see the spectrogram before they pass judgment, and it requires downloading, but that's not necessarily true. Maybe I should have done it, though; it would've saved the ambiguity and some space, too.

 

[_pauls]

So, such was my train of thought (that is, before I knew it was supposed to be a small bird):

I saw that the suggestions were varied, so I wanted to see which one would be supported by machine learning. Then I found out that BirdNET (probably the most accurate among bird call recognisers but still, obviously, fallible) was 100% sure that it was a white-tailed eagle and assigned only negligible probabilites to other species, and I thought it interesting. I listened to the white-tailed eagle's calls from the Macaulay Library and xeno-canto, and, to my (again) untrained ear, they sounded similar, and the spectrograms also looked similar (like in this recording). The syllables of the recording in question have the higher-frequency components blurred out, which could indicate distance, but that would be fine because white-tailed eagles are high fliers. The location also seemed about right in terms of habitat.

I didn't give BirdNET's suggestion straight away because it takes an instant to check it when one has the file downloaded, and I included the link. I assumed that people would want to see the spectrogram before they pass judgment, and it requires downloading, but that's not necessarily true. Maybe I should have done it, though; it would've saved the ambiguity and some space, too.

Sorry I didn't mean to sound harsh in dismissing the suggestion of an online tool, but I have some experience in working in a similar technical field (albeit a few years ago now) and I know how unreliable and difficult an area it is.

The thing is... when I run that file through BirdNET first time it said 100% chance white-tailed eagle, but then subsequently the exact same file gave a very different set of odds, although still favouring WTE. I think the recording is just not good enough to work from.

For me the call in the recording does sound to some extent similar to the start of the white-tailed eagle call but then with the eagle (in my experience) it becomes a more drawn out call which doesn't happen in the case of this bird. Having heard the bird calling several times over the course of 5 minutes it definitely sounded like it was from a small to mid size bird (I realise I didn't put this in my description). For what its worth I did see two white-tailed eagles within a mile of the hotel.

Having listened to the recordings on the Collins Bird Guide app I'm sure it is a woodpecker but I can't decide between black or green.

 

[01101001]

It's very fine by me. I just wanted to say I didn't palm off a random suggestion without trying to check it to the extent that I was able to. Thank you for the ID tips; I'll consider them in the future if I get to hear something similar.