West Ham Online

"I thought you might like this video.



It's a compilation of different birds singing. Beautiful photography. If you expand the 'title' under the video it gives a list of species and the times they pop up in the video. Most of the species are familiar to us in the UK, but there are some 'exotics' (the cranes - wow, what a noise!) It was filmed in Belarus. The guy has a channel you can subscribe to. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and maybe it'll take your mind off you-know-what for a few blessed minutes."

"Cras. I go through Wycombe quite often on the way to my see my grandson. On a good day the skies are awash with Kites just gliding about,a magnificent sight."

"Hermit, I agree with Billy upon that When they were initially reintroduced it was in the Chilterns, by the chalk cutting west of Wycombe, From there they have spread along ridge and through the Aylesbury Vale and beyond We get lots floating about around here, lovely birds but not popular with crows"

"Sounds like a Red Kite, the Buzzard is a lot darker and sparrowhawk much smaller. Kites are also identified by their forked tail."

"Yes, I do tune into birdsong Nurse although it can be difficult in the day to pick them out over the very noisy sparrow flock. I love the sparrows though, it is fun to watch them hurtling about."

Went out for a drive into the country today. A bloody long drive too and ended up seeing what looked like a large hawk of some kind. It appeared to have a reddish tone on its breast which I thought was surprising because it made it stand out from below so that made me question whether it was a predator or not as the camouflage didn’t seem too clever. Beautiful looking thing though.

"You're welcome, zeb. Though if, like me, you are already used to tuning into birdsong and are pretty good at ID-ing birds via their songs and calls, that you will frequently be a bit frustrated by its inability to pick up on and accurately/confidently ID a familiar song. I don't think the app tech is anywhere near as good as the human ear yet. As I said, in a few years it might be fantastic."

Nurse Ratched 10:49 Wed May 13 Just wow!

"Thanks Nurse will give the app a go. There is one bird I have heard in the garden and I don't reconognise the song at all. There is a starling at my office that does brilliant impressions. I was watching it singing and it did a quick wren song, tawny owls and truck reverse warning (there is a Scania repair shop nearby)."

Lyrebirds take the crown for mimicry https://youtu.be/mSB71jNq-yQ https://youtu.be/C0ZffIh0-NA

"Starlings and thrushes have been known to imitate phone ringtones, so this could get confusing..."

Ha! Good luck!

"Thank you Will give it a spin And rest assured, I have had my fill of exotic birds, those roosting in the house are giving me enough grief I'll let you know how I get on"

"Basically it gives you 2 'readings' expressed as percentages. The first reading tells you what percentage of the signal (birdsong) it is analysing comes from a particular species. For example, at that time, a robin and a blue tit might both be singing, but 70% of the noise might be coming from the robin, and 30% from the bluetit (I am simplifying it here). The second reading tells you what percentage of a song closely matches a reference sample of that particular species song. So, it might display a robin, and record that 70% of the signal is coming from the robin, and the sing you are recording matches a reference/typical robin song by (e.g.) 80% or whatever. Obviously a match of, say, 14% to a reference song for any given species is dubious compared to 90%, for argument's sake. Which is why sometimes you have to take it with a large pinch of salt. It's still a lot of fun, though. Just don't get carried away if it tells you you've got something exotic in your area. Look at the percentages! At the moment I would guess the biggest barrier is a lack of reference data, considering even intraspecies birdsong has so many variants."

Woke up to see a rather splendid looking Eurasian Jay (had to look it up) sitting on our fence this morning. It was a bit quiet but looked spectacular with its deep blue wings set against the rest of its brown colouring.

"Morpheus, are you sure they're not the Three Stooges?"

"Morpheus, are you sure they're not the Three Stooges?"

"I'm on Android, but assume the situation is similar for Apple, if that's your thing. There are lots of apps on the Playstore for identifying birdsong. HOWEVER... 1) You need to make sure the one you're considering is for UK birds (many of them are for Yankees, and that's no good for us) 2) Most of them are not the type you record onto. I assume the type you want is where you point your phone's microphone in the vague direction of a singing bird and it tells you the species. You want a sort of 'Shazzam' for birdsong there aren't many of those. The only two I've found are called 'Warblr' (utterly useless. Wouldn't work) and 'Bird Up'. Bird Up is by no means perfect, but at least it tries, unlike Warblr. I think the tech is in its infancy, so in a few years time these apps may be fantastic, but at the moment it's a bit hit and miss."

"We have some unidentified birds that sound like the Laurel and Hardy theme, anyone know what they might be?"

"Nurse What's this app Hun, I would love to get hold of that, would help my identification process enormously"

"My birdsong ID app told me there was a bullfinch nearby this morning, but I'm taking that with a pinch of salt. I did hear a mistle thrush singing at 4:30am, though, and the app picked up on that. Weirdly, the app never seems to 'hear' or recognise wood pigeon song, even though I can hear them close by."

"""...when my visitors arrive they are departing directionally, with purpose"" Indeed."

Zeb - way-hay!

Nurse Ratched 7:01 Wed May 13 My Jackdaws are having a second go.

"I note that when my visitors arrive they are departing directionally, with purpose, reckon they are feeding the nippers Previously they were flitting and generally playing about. I seem to have regular visitors, the woodpeckers and gold finches are on the missing list, come to think of it so are the wrens Sparrows a plenty mind and an assortment of tits and small brown bouncy things that I am yet to identify"

"All go today. The woodpecker visits several times a day now, bless her. A variety of tits. Greenfinches and goldfinches. Sparrows and jays. Marvellous. But today was particularly fabulous because I saw a pair of robins copulating (repeatedly) and the courtship between them, such as the chap feeding his lady with the mealworms I put out. It's late in spring, so I assume either something unfortunate happened to their first clutch, so they're trying again, or they bred early in the spring, their chicks fledged, and now they're going at it again. It's nice to think that because spring seemed to come early and has been mild, loads of birds may manage to raise two clutches successfully."