Somewhere outside my window is a tawny frogmouth, or mopoke, poking his mo’ for all he’s worth every few seconds.
This is not one of my photos.
Late Edit:”Mopoke” can be a frogmouth, and they are often found round here. Their call, however, is a sort of “Moop-Moop-Moop-Moop”. My visitor was the OTHER sort of Mopoke; the Southern Boobook Owl.
see http://www.abc.net.au/goulburnmurray/stories/s1640762.htm for more.
Although I can’t see the blighter (and they are very hard to see: I was working on a lawnmower with the old man once, and we didn’t know a frogmouth was perched in the tree above until suddenly it pooped on me - gah!), I can hear him.
Here’s how he sounds, at least on the low-res microphone of my PDA
left on the window ledge:
MP3 of mopoke
Both files are very short.
G’night, both my readers.
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November 15th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
fun fun fun fun fun fun fun
I like tawny frogmouths. did I mention that. Way cool.
:)
November 15th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Lovely birds, when they’re not emptying yesterday’s lunch on you. I’m keeping an eye out for our very local one, because he sometimes sits on our fence or the next-door clothesline at night. Soon as I pass him with a camera he’s going to be a star!
November 16th, 2007 at 5:51 am
I found another recording for ol’ frogmouth.
After a hard night’s drinking …
Um, well I can imagine.
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/feature/top-40-bird-songs.cfm
It is difficult for me to gauge the repertoire and soothing quality from those two samples.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Subject: Meant to be heard, not seen
“I thought there were two different songs from the same bird.”
I assumed as much as well. Now that you have steered me right, I agree that you recorded the owl. Yep, that frogmouth is a “shoe in” for being the backup signal on Bedrock’s trucks.
“I thought there were two different songs from the same bird. Darn, one wishes for a night-vision scope!”
Heh, heh, heh.
Look at it this way Ryno: there are certain advantages to being a ‘blind (unaware) birder’. The truth be told, after reading your response I went off and listened to a few recordings of songs from other bird species. It seems to be much easier to identify them by the sound that they make than by seeing them with the eye. I am not a birder myself but I would hope that those who were keen about such things would catch on very quickly.
Now that I remember it, bird species censuses are carried out by audio recording and analysis. *Hint* *Hint*
BTW, who do you think buys all those extremely directional parabolic and shotgun microphones?
“Again, the number of birders in the US is surprisingly high, and this time has hit a new record: 81.4 million! That’s about 1 in 4 Americans, which seems a gross overestimate. Nonetheless, as the article below acknowledges, the trend established for now four slices in time is for an increasing number of birders.”
http://eatmorecookies.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/how-many-birders/
Um, a recording engineer such as yourself, having been slightly off put by Evangelical punk , and a one and a two and maybe there is a whole future there? … *Hint* *Hint* …
A EWI 4000, a purveyor of finely sampled and crafted bird songs, *sigh*.
The mind races onwards.
November 25th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
[...] my previous attempts at batrachian (and avian) taxonomy have been fairly wide of the mark, I’ll just say I think he’s a tree frog, [...]