Hey Stan!

Good call scrutinizing any wood-pewee right now, especially one that stands out as vocalizing strangely. For background info for others on the list, it's an interesting and cruel detail that many vagrant Western Wood-Pewees on the East Coast show up in September, while lingering Easterns are still present. Voice will always be key to confirming that ID. In fact, without documentation of the vocalization, any Western Wood-Pewee report is almost doomed to records committee purgatory. Maryland even has a couple specimens, widely considered valid, that have languished at the Smithsonian due to the challenges of separating them visually. The call you described sounds like the "per-de-deep" call that is shared by both Eastern and Western. I remember spending a lot of time recording it the first time I heard it. If you look at the vocalization section for the two species in the big Sibley guide, you can see that he lists it for both. My impression is that birds
 in our area make this call much more frequently in the fall than they do in the summer. Or perhaps they make their typical calls less, so this phrase stands out? In any case, I always add it to my notes so I can someday go back and look up when I've heard it. 


The one that pretty much seals the deal is the "DREE-er" call, which is recorded in many of these Xeno-Canto tracks:
http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Contopus-sordidulus

Many cameras and phones can now take surprisingly clear recordings, so it never hurts for us to be familiar with how to turn them on quickly for audio documentation. Remember, recording video, even if just pointing at the ground, will often record the audio we need. When we found our Western Meadowlark in Dorchester Co., the record breezed through the review process because Mikey Lutmerding was able to record a few moments of digiscoped video that captured the diagnostic 'chuck' call!  Western Wood-Pewee is another species where a short recording could make all the difference!  


Very cool, Stan!

Bill

Bill Hubick
Pasadena, Maryland

http://www.billhubick.com


>________________________________
>From: stan arnold <>
>To: 
>Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2011 9:01 PM
>Subject: [MDOSPREY] Western Wood Pewee song?, etc.
>
>Hi Folks,
>
>I was birding at Bachman Sports Complex off Ordnance Rd. in Glen Burnie this
>morning, and heard a western-type pewee song.  It had the cadence of
>"giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, peee-yerrr; in other words, the song started
>out like that of a Western Wood Pewee, or a Greater Pewee, but did it three
>times before ending with the "peee-yerrr."  I saw the bird, and it looked
>like any other eastern pewee that I've seen.  So the question is, is this
>western-type song diagnostic of western pewees?  I ask this, because I
>recall hearing snippets of this western-type song here in Maryland, but
>never to the extent that I heard it this morning.  Do the eastern pewees
>sometimes make this introductory song?

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