Autumn Leaves; Soundscapes from the Far North

Autumn is almost upon us, which means one thing for many active birders, fall migration. For all birders, Autumn is perhaps the most highly anticipated time of year. Migration takes place on an epic scale over the fall months and there is much to enjoy in the field. For many, it is the spectacle of migration itself, that fires the senses. For others, it is the hopes or rarities, vagrant bird that have been swept far from where they ought to be, only to be found on a far flung headland by a lucker observer. For me, it is the rich soundscape overhead, the calls that fill our skies, as passage migrants flood southwards. In this episode, I wanted to delve into some of the wonderful sounds of the Swedish Autumn. I begin with a small audio magazine on the vocalizations of two supremely evolved specialists of Swedish coniferous woodland, Red Crossbill and Parrot Crossbill. These highly adapted, far wandering finches move widely over large areas. Furthermore, they are resilient birds, hardy late Winter breeders and are exceptionally interesting from a sound recording standpoint..
 The main course, so to speak, will be an extensive sound magazine, with all audio recorded over the course of September 2024.  I spent ten days on this tiny island of Hällögern, along the Baltic coastline of Västerbotten, in Northern Sweden. During this time, I was free to spend all of my time field recording the sounds of Autumn migration at the site, in a wonderfully noise free and pristine environment. For me, it simply doesn't get any better than this.  Using the audio I recorded during the trip, I will share the wonderful sounds and ambience of this little island, which lies just a hundred metres offshore. This represents an audio snapshot of a wonderful location...

Transcript

  You're all very welcome to wild bird acoustics. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and I'll be taking you on a journey into sound. 

​

  Welcome, 📍  welcome everybody to another episode of Wild Bird Acoustics. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and in this episode we have a lovely autumnal episode for you. And I thought we'd mix it up in Season 2. In Season 1, basically, if you were listening in the spring, you were listening to spring audio.

And I thought maybe in Season 2 it would be good to mix this up a little bit. So, therefore, a nice little autumnal kind of theme today. Now, the first thing we're going to deal with today is a Vismig Files episode, and it concerns Red Cross Bill and Parrot Cross Bill. Now, both of these species are widespread here in Sweden.

Red Cross Bill is incredibly complex vocally, particularly around Europe. It has several dialects. I'm not sure how many different calls have been recorded around Europe.  So in some ways I realize that these calls won't be terribly useful for boarders, say, in the UK and Ireland or further south in Europe.

 this species is probably giving a different call type. But however, it still makes for some nice audio. Part of Crossbill happily is much more monotypic, it's calls are pretty much constant. And I think this will be quite useful to any boarders boarding around Northern Europe.

Possibly even for VisMig boarders around Holland.  Where the species is very, very rare, but it's very good to have your ear in on these boards. Should you be lucky enough to get one pass over your head. So, without any further ado, I think we'll just jump into the sound magazine. This is the VisMig files, Red Cross Bill and Parrot Cross Bill.

Enjoy this, folks. 

Now welcome everybody once again to Wild Bird Acoustics and the Vismig Files and in this short film magazine we're going to run through two very similar species, Red Crossbill and Parrot Crossbill.  Now I generally come across Red Crossbill more in southern Sweden than I do in the north but because I have listening stations, both in Vastabotten And at Landsort, which is just south of Nynäshamn in Sweden on the east coast, I have lots of audio files of both species, and they're quite interesting.

And I thought it would make for a nice sound magazine. We're going to start with Red Cross Bill, and what I'm going to do is take you through some audio of migrating and actively moving Red Cross Bill first. So without any further ado, we'll get straight into that folks.  Now, around Europe, Red Crossbill calls are different, um, they have local dialects, and they have been widely studied.

They're a very diverse group of birds, uh, vocally. It's quite complicated at the moment.  There are three species of crossbill currently in Europe. That is Parrot Crossbill, Red Crossbill, and Two barred Crossbill. There's still some ongoing argument about a possible fourth species, which is Scottish Crossbill.

I'm not even too sure. What the current taxonomic thinking is on that species, but for me at the moment, I basically go along the lines of there are three species of crossbill. Now, as I say, it's a very fluid situation and a lot of study has been done on the calls of red crossbill in particular. So, like I said, there's different dialects all around Europe and here in Sweden, the kind of predominant call type in flight is called N4. 

So what you're going to hear is mainly N4 type flight calls.  Now what I'll do is I'll just play a quick recording first. This is a single bird, a Red Cross Bill, overflying Hallegern in late July  2023. 

So there you go. That's the typical call of Red Cross Bill here in Sweden. As I say, the N4 flight type call. And it's very distinctive once you get your ear in on it.  Now, Red Cross Bill here in Sweden generally migrates and starts to move very, very early. So you'll get birds on the move as early as July, and the reason for this is because they are very, very early breeders.

So these birds will often start to breed as early as February, and by late summer the birds have raised families, quite often two broods, and you will get these flocks roaming around the forest of Sweden. But by late July they start to move, and quite often in quite spectacular numbers. I've done a number of watches now in late July and early August at Hallegern in Vasterbotten, and I have had counts of well over a thousand birds in a morning at that site.

So it can be quite spectacular as I say, you can get flocks of up to 40 50 birds moving through and that can be a regular passage at that time of the year. Now I'm going to play another recording of Red Cross Bill again from Hallegern in Bastropotten. Have a listen to this folks. 

Now obviously a lot more birds involved there. That was a quite large flock of birds, Red Cross Bills, moving over the island of Hallegern. And you can hear their typical N4 flight calls there. It's a very distinctive call when you get to learn it.  Now also towards the end of that recording you heard a second call type, a little bit different from the typical flight calls.

And those calls are kind of referred to as excitement calls. And more often you will hear them from perch birds as they are feeding, but they do give them also in flight. Quite often when these birds are moving over the island, a few will land in pines briefly before setting off again. But generally speaking, by the end of July and through August, birds are very much on the move.

And I find quite often in Vasterbotten, they're flying along the coast to the northeast. And I suspect they are moving grounds to better feeding grounds, perhaps looking for more food. Perhaps a better cone harvest, and I suspect a lot of these birds end up moving into Finland. Now another recording coming up, this time a flock of Red Cross Bill at Hallegern.

In the distance you will hear a few Eurasian Siskin calls, as well as the calls of Little Gull in the background. This is a nice clear recording of the typical fly calls of a Red Cross Bill. 

Now next up for you, I have a recording of a single Red Cross Bill call. Again, at Caligarn in Västerbotten, Sweden. It's quite clear here. There are a few blue tits just calling in the background. They're quite distant, and also a very distant will o warbler in song.  But you can clearly hear this bird just approaching the recorder, flying overhead, and then just moving off once again.

So once again, this is Red Cross Bill on migration, Hallegarn in Sweden, late July  2022 and  23. 

Now I'm going to leave you with one final recording of a flock of Red Cross Bill on migration once again from Hallegarn and I get a lot of recordings at Hallegarn. It's nice and quiet up there and that's why I've chosen to actually use recordings from there. All of these recordings were recorded with an SM mini recorder by Wildlife Acoustics, and it's been wonderful for recording that species. 

Now, as I mentioned, Red Cross will often move through in flocks. They have a loose formation. It's not a very tight formation, and this can be very useful when you're actually watching migrants in the autumn. So many species have different formations of flocks.  So, for example, your Asian Siskin will move through in flocks of 50 to 70 birds quite often.

But what they do is they ball together, and quite often in a kind of a round shape, very tightly packed, and it's very, very distinctive. And quite often you can identify the birds from a long, long away, or suspect that is what they are. Now, Red Crossbill and Padded Crossbill, neither of these actually form particularly tight flocks. 

They'll quite often be quite spread out, often in a large, long string, but they call constantly to each other. But like I say, not tightly packed, and this can be quite useful.  Now before I move on to Parrot Crossbill, I will play one last recording of the Red Crossbill. This is a flock once again, just moving over the recorder.

And once again, you can hear a few excitement calls in this nice clear recording. Have a close listen to this folks. 

Now we're going to move on to Parrot Crossbill and it is a difficult species to identify by call. It actually gave me quite a degree of trouble when I first moved here to Sweden and it took me quite a while to get my ear in on these calls. Eventually when I got up to Hallagern and started to do regular watches there in the autumn, I eventually began to hear them so often that it just automatically clicked for me.

And sometimes that can happen in birding. You just have to gain a bit of experience with the species to be able to readily identify them by sound in the field. Now quickly, a few things about Parrot Crossbill. 

They are first and foremost a much later migrant here in Sweden. I generally get them much later in the year and they start to move through in numbers in September. You do get the odd bird moving around locally in August in Hallegern. They do breed in Hallegern. Generally speaking, the larger movements come much later in the autumn. 

Now each year in late September, I travel up to Hallegern to just do a little bit of migration watching. And by that time, crossbill are very much on the move.  A good morning in late September is 50 to 100 birds perhaps, but I do strongly suspect that they are moving through in much bigger numbers in October.

Just from what I've heard on my listening station recordings, it was quite difficult to judge the exact numbers just from audio alone.  Now enough talk I think, I'm going to play you a recording of Parrot Crossbill.  This recording is of a single bird overflying the recorder. It's from September 2023. And we'll give that a listen now. 

Now, as always, it's very difficult to describe bird sounds in words. But in the fields, Paracrossbill just seems a little clearer and just a little bit more defined to me and has a little bit less of a clicking quality than Redcrossbill.  I find that the birds, if they're close, have a bit more volume, they're actually louder.

And that can be quite striking if you get a bird or a group of birds just over your head. But of course, when you're watching migration, quite often birds can be quite distant. So this can be of limited value, really, in the field.  Now, what I'm going to play for you next is a very typical recording of part of crossbill, a small flock, and kind of at medium distance.

And if you listen to this very, very carefully, you will hear something at 19, 20 seconds that sometimes Paracrossbill do in flight, and it's this very strange, just kind of repeated kind of phrase, and it's very different to the regular flight call. Now there is three pipette in this recording. It's a very typical autumn scene, there's some blue tits in the background,  but you will hear this flock of Paracrossbill just approaching the microphone at reasonable distance.

And like I say, this is a very kind of typical. Recording. It's a good representation of what you often hear in the field from the species. So I thought it would be good to include this. Like I say, at 19 seconds, you have a typical little trill that sometimes Paracross will give in flight. And I found this to be very useful in the field.

And you have to listen for it quite carefully. So I'll play that recording for you now. This is a small flock of Parrot Crossbill overflying Hallegern in early September 

2022. 

Now, I do get Parrot Crossbill as well at Landsort in Sweden late in the autumn. These birds move right down the east coast of Sweden. And I decided to include this nice recording.  This is a single Parrot Crossbill overflying my listening station at Landsort, Sweden. in October  2021. 

We're going to travel back north to Vasterbotten now for the next recording. This is a particularly nice recording of a single Paracross Bill overflying my recorder there. In the background, if you're very keen eared, you will hear Misslethrush, Siskin and Bulfinch, as well as a few Blue Tit in the background.

This is a typical autumn recording, but the recording here is mainly of Paracross Bill, a nice clear recording of a migrating single bird. 

Now we're going south again to Lansart, and in this recording, which is quite remarkable, you will hear those trilling calls that they sometimes give. I referred to them earlier. You can hear them much more clearly in this recording. So here at Lansart, in this recording, you will first hear Siskin, then a Calling Raven, and then you will hear the approach of a small group of Paracrossbill. 

And again, at around 18, 19 seconds, the birds start to give those little trills that they sometimes give in flight before the flock moves over. It's a very nice clear recording at that point. And then they just disappear into the distance. So have a listen to this, a very nice recording of a small group Paracrossbill from Landshort in September,  2020. 

Now many crossbill calls are classified. They've been studied  to incredible detail around Europe. And the typical flight calls of Paracross Bill in my part of the world are classified as N 22 type flight calls. And that generally is what you're hearing in these recordings. But like I say, Paracross Bills do some other calls in flight, and sometimes they can be quite remarkable.

Now I'm going to play another recording now of a single board passing, and I just picked this up a few weeks ago when I was analysing audio from last October at Halligan in Vastobottan. And I just picked this up a few weeks ago when I was analysing audio from last October at Halligan in Vastobottan.

And here you will hear a single bird passing and it gives this call, which actually reminded me of Pine Grosbeak. It sounds vaguely like a blackbird, but this is actually also part of the crossbill. Now in this recording there are some more typical fly calls. They're quite faint, it's not the greatest recording in the world.

But this other call it gives carries a long way. Have a listen to this. 

So with migration, as with other areas in bird recording and listening to birds, you never stop learning. And that was a new call for me. And I found that quite interesting. Now I'm going to leave you with a last recording, a typical kind of autumn soundscape of quite a large group of parted crossbill. It was recorded in October 2022 at Hallegern in Västerbotten,  and for me, this is one of the typical sounds of northern Sweden. 

Now, there's a great deal of interest in Paracross Bill in many parts of Europe, as it is an extreme rarity. It's very difficult to identify in flight, pretty much impossible just on appearance. Given a good view, they can look heavy headed and heavy build, but generally speaking, you're not going to actually pick up anything diagnostic on a flying bird at any kind of range.

So you're left with the calls. So my advice would be to make sure you have a recorder with you when you're out watching Visible Migrants, as the sonogram is quite easily separated from Red Cross Bill. And this will give you the best chance to actually nail a passing bird with regard to maybe an application to the Rarities Committee of your respective country. 

So as I mentioned previously, here is a lovely recording of a distant flock, quite a large flock, I'd say, of Parrot Cross Bill. At Faster Button in Sweden. 

So there you go folks. That's the vismink foils, red crossbill, and parrot crossbill.  It seemed pretty sensible to me to include both of these species in the same sound magazine as they're quite similar sounding and I thought this would be of the greatest interest to listeners and regular watchers of autumn migration.

So I hope this has been useful in some way. Of course, there's an awful lot more material on Xenocanto. And of course in your part of the world, calls may be slightly different, particularly in reference to Red Cross Bill.  So if you're interested, get on there to Xenocanto and just swat up on your local Red Cross Bill calls.

But I thought actually it would be quite interesting for our listeners to hear the calls here from Sweden of both of these species.  So I'd say that just about wraps up this The Vismig Files once again here at Wild Bird Acoustics. As always, thanks for listening, folks. And we'll see you again on the podcast next time. 



So there you go. That's another of his mig files and I hope you did enjoy it. There's a lot of audio there to take in and listen to of both species and I hope in some capacity. You find that useful in your birding around Europe.  Now, in keeping with the autumnal kind of theme that I was telling you about earlier on, we're going to take you all the way up to Hallegern in Västerbotten in northern Sweden. Now, as always, in September, I visited the island once again.

That's September 2024,  and it was quite wonderful. I did a lot of recording. Conditions were a little bit difficult. It was quite windy and there was a little bit of, it was quite poor to migration. The winds weren't quite in the right quarter for a large part of the nine days. I was there, but nevertheless, I got some absolutely wonderful audio.

And what I thought I'd do is just put that together. I think I have to. Two episodes are to sell magazines with the audio I collected over nine days. And this is the first of those. I'm sure I will be putting the other one into another episode at some point in season two of the podcast.  Now the island is one of my favorite locations to field record in. It's beautifully quiet, generally speaking. There's a lot of birds passing in the morning on migration if the weather is just right. But apart from all that, it is very very far north here in Sweden.

So there's an awful lot of interest from various northern type species. So there's always something to do, something to record.  This year I had, of course, the Sennheiser Array with me and I was really looking forward to using that up on the island for the first time. So I got some lovely audio and what I'll do now is I'll just simply play that sound magazine for you.

This is a return to Halligan episode one and I hope you enjoy it as always folks here at Wild Bird Acoustics. 

  Now welcome folks to another Sound Magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics. And in this Sound Magazine, we're going to be taking in some lovely autumn audio from the island of Hallagern in Vasterbotten.  I visited the island in the autumn of 2024 in the last week of September, and it was quite windy on this occasion for most of the week, but it did lend some lovely ambience from the woodland.

And what I'm going to start with is a lovely post dawn bit of audio. And this was recorded on the 20th of September 2024. And it's a very typical scene of what dawn sounds like in autumn on the island. So we'll have a listen to that now. It is about two minutes, 50 seconds. And then I'll run through some of the species that you're going to hear. 

Have a listen, folks. 

Now, lovely scene there. I think you'll agree. And in the distance there, you can hear the wind coming through the trees and the distant sound of the Baltic Sea. And it starts off with the two calls of Northern Bullfinch. Quite a few Goldcrest, Blue Tit. Plenty of Songthrush in the woodland, which is very, very typical.

And mostly sip calls from that species. Towards the end, a few bits of Alarm Call. There's also the typical tick calls of Robin, which they often give just after dawn. And also some calling Blackbird. And towards the end, just a little bit of subsong from Blackbird. So that sets the scene for this soundscape which is Autumn on Halligarn and we'll move along now to a few of the species I recorded over the course of the next week. 

Now first up we have a species which was very prevalent during the week and that is Black Woodpecker.  Now the species can be difficult to record but on Halligarn during this week there was at least one bird regularly visiting the island. And on the evening of the 23rd of September 2024 a bird was on the island and I got a nice recording with the Tilinga Prabhula.

Of the board giving a few contact calls. In the background here you will hear the calls of Mallard on the water. But the main species here is the contact call of Black Woodpecker. 

So that was the contact call of Black Woodpecker. And later the same evening I got a nice short recording of the flight call of the same species. Now quite often the species takes flight, gives this call. And this is quite a short recording. So once again, this is the flight call of Blackwood Pecker.

There are a few huddled crows in the background. Have a listen, folks. 

Now, the first evening on the island, I spent quite a bit of time just wandering around with the Tilinga, just kind of grabbing as many sound files as I could. And I got quite a few nice short recordings, and I'm going to run through a few of those with you now. First up is a very short recording, and it's of a Brambling just giving some quiet calls from the conifers around the cabin on the island.

So, this is Brambling Calling. 

Now, finch species are very prevalent on the island by late September, and Brambling is one of the species you will find in good numbers. So, I went around the island just recording what I could, and I came across another finch species. And this was a species I would run into all week, and that is Bullfinch.

Now, in Vasterbotten we get a lot of Bullfinch on migration, and they are Northern Bullfinch.  So, that's Nominate Parola.  And they give this wonderful kind of trumpet call, a very mellow kind of whistle. And this bird I got particularly close to. You can hear it moving around, you can hear some wing flapping.

And a very clear recording of the call with the Telinga Parabola. So, this is Northern Type Bullfinch. 

Now, I'll stay on Northern Bullfinch for just a little while. I have a little recording for you. And on this occasion, it was recorded with the Sennheiser 8020 array. And in this recording, again, you're going to hear the mellow whistles of Northern Bullfinch. Quite a nice recording, again, on quite a windy day, but I think it adds quite a nice ambience to the recording.

So have a listen to this, folks. This again is Northern Bullfinch in Västerbotten, Sweden. 

Now one of the things I love about sound recording is that you are always learning. and even with common species such as Bullfinch on the island. You occasionally learn new things. And that was case in point here. I came across this bird giving a very unusual call. I hadn't heard it before and I managed to get a recording.

So you will hear the old call here in this recording in the first 20 seconds or so. I was quite confused by this one heard it at first. I wasn't sure what it was, but eventually I got eyes on and confirmed the species was Northern Bullfinch. Also in the background here, you're going to hear some willow tit, a calling mistletrouche, and some field fair, as well as a feeding great spotted woodpecker in the background. 

Now as I've often said on the podcast, Never Pass Common Species, and here's a nice recording of a very common species indeed, it's Eurasian Wren. I came across this bird just giving the trailing call in the forest. It's actually not that common in Vastapotten. I got a few birds passing through in the autumn, but I decided to stop and record this.

In the background you're going to hear willow tit, blue tit, and grey tit all giving various calls, a calling magpie, and towards the end also a mistletoe.  The main species I was intending to record here is Eurasian wren, and here is that bird just trilling away in the forest in the early morning at Vastapotten in Sweden. 

Ocho Rios is located adjacent to the Shepherd's Park restaurant. There are over 200 types of trees in Springfield who are consistent with which natural forest elements the village is concerned with. Hey, Hey. Hey. Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh. 

Now, each year I get up to the island in late autumn, mainly to watch autumn migration. And as much as I love to sit out in the morning and watch the migrants going over, it is impossible to ignore the resident birds in the area. And Hooper's Swan. We're very lucky to have a local pair. They breed about 600 meters away in a small bay.

And I've become quite attached to these two boards over the years. It's definitely the same pair. One of them has a slightly bad leg on the left side, and they've just been in the area, at least this board has, for at least 12 years now. And it's lovely to have them around. They just fill the place with some wonderful sounds.

And quite often they'll just sit around feeding quite close to the cabin. I see them most days when I'm out, and I really, really enjoy them. And they just lend so much to the kind of ambience of the island. And it's definitely one of the sounds of Northern Sweden for me.  I'm going to play a short recording, just over a minute long, of the local pair of Hooper Swan. 

Hooper Swan 

Now, another resident species or local species on the island is Willow tit. And it's been very interesting these last two autumns to see a huge number of birds moving through the island. And last year, for the first time, I saw birds actively migrating. Now, Willow tit isn't actually noted much as a migrant, but I think what's going on is a shortage of one of their main sources of food, and that is pine seed.

So I think it's reasonable to assume that when these crops fail, when pine cones don't actually produce much seed, that these birds will move. And this year was quite amazing. There was birds everywhere on the island. And indeed, when I got there, I actually put out some sunflower seeds or sunflower hearts.

And by the end of the week, I had up to 25 willow tit, which is quite remarkable on the island. And whilst I was watching visible migration as well, I could see small parties of birds moving from the northwest over in a southwesterly direction. And that's something I haven't really seen before. Certainly not in big numbers.

I've had one or two birds moving, but I assumed they were local birds. There was no doubt this year that willow tit were very much on the move.  Now, as a field recorder, you get all kinds of sound recordings, and the first one I'm going to play for you is Willow Tit, and here it's against the ambience of the Baltic Sea on quite a rough day.

It was a little bit windy, and I'm going to play that for you now. So as I say, this is the sound of the Baltic Sea, quite a windy day in late September, with some Willow Tit moving down along the coast early in the morning. Have a listen. And 

Now, as I said, there's different kinds of recordings on that, I would kind of refer to as an ambient recording with the species involved. It's very nice to get the Baltic Sea in the background on a windy day. But of course, it's nice also to get a closer up recording with more focus on the bird. So I'm going to play another recording now of willow tit.

This time they were recorded around the cabin. It was a little bit more still. Birds were actually much closer to the Sennheiser microphones. And the result was a very clear, loud recording of the harsh calls of willow tit. It's a remarkable call this, I quite like it, and when you hear this call you know you're in northern Sweden.

It's not a bird you find anywhere else really, it's very much a northern species here. So have a listen to this. This is a wonderful recording of willow tit around the cabin in the garden at Hallegern in Sweden. 

Now one last resident species for you, but a very special one. And it's always nice to get a recording of a species that you have not recorded before and it was amazing to get this recording. Now on this particular morning, I was having breakfast and And fortunately, I decided to leave the Sennheiser array out, just recording passively as I did so.

But whilst eating breakfast, I was looking out the window. Now what happened was the birds came in over the bay and they were quite active and they were just floating over the bay. And all of a sudden, one of the birds just tipped and dived at the other bird. And I remember thinking to myself, man, wouldn't it be wonderful if one of them actually vocalized while that was going on.

And I went back to my breakfast and a little while later, I decided to go down and retrieve the recorder. And go through the audio, and I was absolutely over the moon to get this recording. It's a little bit distant, but it's very, very clear. So this is White tailed Sea Eagle. It's actually a species I've wanted to record for a very, very long time, but it can be very, very difficult.

Away from nesting sites, and you need a license for that kind of thing, so it's taken me a long, long time to get this recording. 

Now, next up for you, I have a recording of a migrant species on the island, and that is Reed Bunting. I'll play this quickly for you now, it's quite a short recording. What you're going to hear is a recording of passing, migrating, rebounding, early in the morning, at the north end of the island. So this is a reed bunting. 

Now I'm going to play another short recording of reed bunting. I got quite a lot of audio of the species. In this recording you're going to hear a passing reed bunting once again. Also some meadow pippet passing in this recording. As well as some autumn thrushes like redwing and songthrush here in this recording.

Have a listen. 

Now, autumn thrushes are a big feature on the island in autumn, naturally, and you get massive movements sometimes of redwing, fieldfare, and songthrush, quite a lot of blackbird as well.  In the next recording on the play you, you're going to hear some migrating fieldfare. Early in the morning, just moving through the trees.

And it's a very prevalent species on the island. Always nice to see. And it's a species I've neglected to record a little bit, hence this recording. So this is migrating field fair once again early in the morning at Vastabotten in Sweden. 

Now a very autumnal scene there, and that was field fair. The harsh checking calls of the species. There was a few metapippid calling in there as well to start the recording. And those of you who are good at your calls will have identified the doorbell call of waxwing in there also. Another species prevalent on the island in late September and right through October.

So a wonderful scene there and typical of the early morning on the island.  Now in the next recording, another autumnal thrush species and that is redwing. And what you're going to hear in this recording is the tuck calls of redwing. Also, a few flight calls of the species. In the background, you're going to hear some blue tits, some chaffinch, and also towards the end of the recording, you will hear a few brambling moving around on the island.

Again, this is an early morning recording, and quite nice, again, quite windy. But a very nice recording, and I think it captures the sounds of autumn time on the island at the location. 

Now I have one more species for you in this sound magazine and it was a wonderful experience on the island later in the week when common crane started to move over the island in large flocks. I got some nice recordings and the birds were migrating. On one particular day I had over 500 birds, probably 7 or 8 flocks, some of them up to about 60 or 70 strong.

And this led to me getting some wonderful audio with the Tlingit Parabola. Now the first recording I'm going to play for you is a group of about 50 crayon moving over at quite a height. They were probably about five, six hundred meters up in the air. But that did not take away from the audio at all.

They're very, very vocal, quite a loud call. And in the background here, you will hear the calls of Nuthatch, Fieldfare, Willowchits, Misslethrush, and Hooded Crow. But this is a migrating group of common crayon over the island towards the end of the week. And it's an absolutely. Wonderful sound. 

Okay. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. 

Now before I go, I'm going to leave you one more recording of my Great Incommon Crane. It was quite difficult to actually pack up and on the last day I was trying to clean up the cabin, get everything organized for the winter and it just so happened that lots of crane were passing that morning and it led to me just kind of not concentrating on what I was doing.

I kept running out to the garden with the Prabhla and grabbing recordings of these birds as they went over. So once again, this is Common Crayon migrating over the island. In the background here, you're going to hear calling magpie, a few calls Northern Bullfinch towards the end, as well as some migrating Siskin.

And if you listen very, very carefully, you will hear the higher kind of squeaking calls, and these are actually juvenile Common Crayon in amongst the adults. It makes for a wonderful bit of audio. This is migrating common crown right over the island on my last morning on the island. 

So there you go, folks, that's a short sound magazine on some of the wonderful sounds that you hear in autumn in northern Sweden, anywhere along the coast, you're going to come across these kind of sounds on these boards. Migrants and resident birds, and I really do hope that you have enjoyed this magazine, as always. 

Now, it's a wonderful time of the year to be up there, and I absolutely love being on the island. It's particularly special in the autumn when there's so much going on. And I hope this has given you a little taste of the sounds of that part of the world. It's a wonderfully quiet place to sound record, and I never tire of being on the island.

Every day seems to bring something special, something nice to record, and there's so much to listen to up there. It's just a wonderful part of the world. Once again, that's all from me, Alan Dalton here at Wild Bird Acoustics. Thanks for listening once again. 

 So that brings us to the end of another episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, and I hope you've enjoyed it. As always, you can find us on YouTube by simply searching for Wild Bird Acoustics. We do have a mailing list also, and if you want to be part of that, folks, you can drop us an email at wildbirdacoustics at gmail.

com.  Now, all feedback is gratefully received here at the podcast, and if you'd like the right review of the podcast, you can do so at the Buzzsprout header page. In addition, if you'd like to make a small financial donation to the podcast, you can do so using the buy me a coffee button, and you'll find that also on the Buzzsprout header page. 

We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more from Wild Bird Acoustics. Until then, take it easy folks. And as always, don't be afraid to get out into the field and relax and just listen to the wildlife out there. Maybe even do a little bit of field recording of your own.  We'll talk to you soon folks. Take it easy.

That's all from Wild Bird Acoustics.