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Re: Strange Mystery Call Resolution

From:

Alexander Baish

Reply-To:

Alexander Baish

Date:

Fri, 1 Aug 2008 16:42:54 -0700

Having gone back and relistened to the sound files on the "hog heaven"
site, in my defense the groundhog I heard had an "abnormal call."
Unlike this little guy that the recorders found to squeal nice and
long into their mics, my hog would cut off everything but the very
loud "WEEP!" heard at the beginning of every sound file. I was
practically standing right on top of him, so maybe he got a little
nervous.

On 8/1/08, Alexander Baish <> wrote:
> Thank you all for the help on my mystery call report from yesterday.
> Most replies I received fell squarely into two camps: a few for a Sora
> and many for Great-crested Flycatcher. The maddening part of this,
> however, was the total lack of movement in the scrub, trees, or reeds
> when I was trying to find this mystery bird. Whatever it was had
> stayed put for a half an hour until it finally fell silent. This
> seemed to support a Sora deep in the reeds over the flycatcher, which
> in all the times I've seen one of this species has rarely kept still.
> But neither birds' calls rang quite true when I listened to them
> online. So back to the bioretention pond I went today!
>
> Bob Ringler wins the prize for correctly identifying the "mystery
> bird." It was in fact...a groundhog.
>
> I find it amazing that I had never heard a groundhog squeal before,
> having lived Frederick County all my life, where they outnumber any
> other living organism (not to mention that there's one living under my
> front porch!). But right at the base of the tree stand from where this
> squeal was emitted is a large den hole. For anyone else who has not
> heard one and is interested in not making this same mistake, someone's
> recorded their squeals at this link:
>
> http://www.hoghaven.com/hear.html
>
> This adds a new non-bird to the list of "animals impersonating birds"
> that I have momentarily looked foolish chasing. Most recent roster
> additions include chipmunks in leaves impersonating furry towhees,
> field mice in a hollow oak impersonating nonexistent baby birds, and
> as recently as tonight, a white-tailed deer impersonating a hawk (I
> ran outside to see what had caused the flurry of finches fleeing my
> feeders...the doe had nosed open my big hopper and was chowing down).
>
> --
> (sheepish) Alex Baish
> Ijamsville, MD (home)
> Baltimore, MD (work/school)
> 
>


-- 
Alex Baish
Ijamsville, MD (home)
Baltimore, MD (work/school)