SEPTEMBER 2026 ADVENTURES

Here are some of the more interesting bird sounds I recorded in the garden of friends over the nights of 4/5/6th September 2026. Apart from the owls most came from the period around dawn:

1.) Tawny Owl

Plenty of noise over both nights from courting couples. Hard to say just what is going but lost of sounds typical of the caterwauling these can make when their blood is running hot! But I found the following particularly interesting:

There is a lot going on in there but if you follow the spectrogram below I will tell you of the bits that fascinated me:

It starts out with the usual squeals that his bird makes but at 0.24 there are 3 burst of a low bubbling call, the next one at 0.28 and the third at 0.32. These bubbling calls are to solicit copulation, I used to think they were only made by the male, but I have read that females may also do it. In this recording, because of the sequence between 0.40 and 0.48 where the loud call is a male, I am inclined to think it may be the female doing this. I need to do more research, I have not been keeping up with the owl literature. The second thing is that you hear what sounds like a “slap” at 0.21, and again at 0.35, 0.49 and 0.58. I have heard this before in Long-eared Owls, it is wing slapping, a courtship activity by males to impress females. Never heard in Tawny’s but I have now read that they do it but very rarely. Bingo ! Right in your backyard. I was very pleased with this.

2). Pheasant

This one is no stranger to you but I thought you might like to see what a male pheasant’s crow looks like on a spectrogram:

I like the little “uh-oh” following the later calls, almost an undertone like he is worried she may attack him for making too much noise !

3). Buzzard

This one puzzled me a bit. It is not the usual adult buzzard call that you hear when they are circling overhead. I think it may be a juvenile still hoping to be fed by parents and is flying around looking for them. If you use headphones (recommeded) you can hear the first two calls are from the right and the second two from the left so it is clearly flying around.

4). Mystery…….

This next one is a bit of a puzzle. There is a single fox call at the start (4s in) but followed by a series of thumps at irregular intervals. To my aged ears they sound just like the wing claps you heard in number 1 above. However there were no Tawny Owls around at that time, only about 45 mins later and then some distance away, too far to record wing claps. Now, the time that I have heard wing claps just like this were from a Long-eared Owl. Do you know if there are any in your area? If you see your birdy neighbour around and have the chance ask him, I would love to know if he has ever seen/heard Long-eared around the village.

5) Less of a mystery…..

There was just one other call that I recorded a lot of, at very regular intervals, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I am sure you have heard it before - can you help me ?