Norm and others,
 
Sorry for the late reply, but as you heard, I was out of state all  weekend.  
Yesterday was spent at school finishing everything that should  have been 
done over the previous 4 days ;)
If you sent me an email after Thursday morning, I will get back to you  
shortly.
 
 
Norm wrote:
    Matt, how did you learn the night flight  calls?  Primarily from Michael 
O'Brien's CD, from field experience, or from  other recordings of which I'm 
unaware?

A combination of all 3 is the answer and I would add that discussions with  
Michael O'Brien have been invaluable especially for birds not included  on his 
CD.  Including this weekend we discussed rails, learning the  difference 
between Clapper and King (we thought we had a flyover King on  Thursday night, but 
it was a Clapper) and he confirmed my suspicion that a  Virginia Rail flew 
over my house 2 weeks ago.  The CD is an excellent  starting point, but the field 
experience is most definitely needed to understand  the variation in "simple" 
calls, such as the thrushes or cuckoos.  Also, I  would add that a location 
that exhibits redetermined migration or morning  flight, such as Assateague or 
Higbee Beach in Cape May, is a great way to get a  visual identification on 
the notes.  I have learned shorebird notes  completely from experience in the 
field, Jim Stasz made me learn them when I  first started birding with him and 
they have been very helpful.  There are  also other flight call recordings for 
bitterns, shorebirds, etc at various  places on the web that I have used and 
sometimes those calls are buried on bird  song CDs.  
 
Hope this helps, maybe if Michael is reading this he can offer some  tips.
 
Matt Hafner
Bel Air, MD