The Sound Identification of Hawfinch; Echoes from the Woodlands

In this episode, I first take a look at the vocalizations of migrating Hawfinch. This is tha largest finch species in Europe, a stunning looking beast that inhabits in our woodlands here in Sweden. It is a species that is actively sought by birders,  due to its scarcity in many parts of Europe. Knowing it calls will give you the edge on finding them, particularly on active migration.
 The main sound magazine is a celebration of Spring. At Sandemar Reserve, last year,I spent many happy nights and early mornings collecting audio through the Spring perod. Here in this episode, I share some incredible audio with listeners of this magical place...

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. 

Now you're all very welcome once again to another episode here at wild bird acoustics and we have a fantastic podcast lined up for you today we're going to start off with a short cell magazine very short indeed and it concerns half inch in particular the calls they give on  their flight calls. Now Hawfinch is the largest species of finch here in Europe and Sweden.

It's an absolutely beautiful bird if you can get a good look at it. It's well worth learning the call folks. If you can do that it will lead you to find more of these wonderful birds. 

 Now, learning the call is essential for all serious VisMig observers, and I just thought, with that in mind, I'd put together a very short sound magazine, and we'll get straight into that now. This is the sound identification of half inch. Have a listen. 

 Now you're all very welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics once again, and this short sound magazine we're going to concentrate on the flight calls of Hawfinch.  Now 2024 was a very interesting year for Hawfinch and there was a massive influx of the species into the UK in particular, and it's been quite interesting actually.

I haven't detected a large amount of calls here in Sweden in my audio, and this has led me to suspect that perhaps the origin of these birds is Central Europe.  Now, had the birds have originated maybe further north in Scandinavia or to the east of Sweden, I probably would have seen a large uptick in birds and influx as such here, but that wasn't the case.

So I'm just wondering perhaps, and it's just speculation, that maybe the warm weather last year had affected the crop of beech trees known as beechmast, which may in turn have actually led to a massive influx of the species as they searched for food and might explain why so many of these birds were actually recorded in the autumn of 2024 in the UK, for example.

Anyway, given the interest in the species in the UK in the last year, I thought it'd be good maybe to do a short sound magazine on the flight calls of half inch. So here we go, folks.  Now, Hoffinch is a species that has two specific flight calls, generally speaking. There's a kind of a C call and then there's a higher tick call.

And both of these can be heard from birds at night and also during the day. So, it's good to be aware of the fact that there are two call types. And we'll run through those now with you in this short sound magazine.  Now, first up is an early morning recording of Hoffinch. And it was made at Landsort. In November 2022, the first thing you're going to hear are some tree sparrows, followed by a small group of waxwing flying over the recorder.

You'll hear the doorbell calls, and then you will hear an approaching half inch giving sea calls. Now, this appears really as a sonogram quite high up. It's quite thin, quite high, and very, very distinctive. Now, if you listen very, very carefully towards the end of this recording, you'll You will also hear a tick call also of Huffin, so we're gonna have a listen to that now.

This is Hoff inch passing over the recorder in November, 2022. 

Now another recording for you also from Hort Sweden, and this one is from October, 2022. Now, in the background here, Lanor is always, always busy at migration times, and here you're gonna hear Northern Bullfinch passing. There's a few blue tit in the background, also some chaffing and some trees, bro. But listen carefully and you will hear the sea calls once again of half inch approaching and passing over the recorder in October 2022 at the Landsort.

Have a listen, folks. 

Now, here in Sweden, half inch is very much a late autumn species. It does pass in small numbers in spring. But mainly speaking, it's late autumn when these birds go through. And quite often I find they associate with red wing or perhaps bullfinch. I always find when there's a good movement of Red Wing on, it's always a good time to get out and look for half inch on passage. 

Now, half inch is actually very, very common here in Sweden, but surprisingly scarce on passage at places like Landshark. So it's always a decent bird to get on a VisMig session.  Now, the next recording is quite nice. It's a half inch giving both the tick call and the see call. And it's alternating the two calls as it passes over the recorder.

Now listen carefully to this, it's a very, very typical recording of the species passing over on autumn migration. Once again, this was recorded at Landsort in October 2022. 

Now, Hawfinch is actually quite rare further north in Sweden. And at Faster Button, I get much less. The birds pass generally in September and October in the autumn only. And I only have a handful of records. We'll have a nice recording now of a bird from September 2023.  Now, in the background here, you're going to hear common red pawl, a very, very prevalent species there in autumn, and also a few meadow pippet towards the end of the recording.

Now, this is just the sea calls, the high sea calls of these species. So, listen carefully, it's quite a nice recording of a bird approaching from the distance and going fairly close to the recorder. Now, as always, folks, I recommend you wear headphones when listening to these calls. Some of the audio isn't fantastic, but it does give a very good representation of what it's like to hear these birds on visible migration at watch points around the coastline.

So have a listen to this, folks. 

So there you go. Also a hooded crow in the background and the seacalls of a passing huffinch.  Now next we're off to Land's Earth once again, October, 2023. Again, a late autumn bird. And here in this recording, again, you're going to hear the sea calls, the high sea calls of a passing half inch. In the background here, it's a very typical autumnal scene.

You have some chaffinch, there's a couple of calls of brambling, and there's a ticking robin in the background, just to confuse things. Once again, this is the high sea call of passing half inch, this time at Lansart, October 2022. 

Now a little bit earlier in the autumn this time. This was recorded in September 2023 at Landsort in Sweden. It's a little bit earlier in the autumn and the main species here in the background is Eurasian Siskin as a group passes overhead. But once again there's a passing half engine here. The high sea calls once again which really is the prevalent call here in Sweden.

I don't get the tick call as much and quite often I hear this more in woodland habitat. So, there's something to be said for that. Generally speaking, most of the calls I hear are the C calls, with the odd tick call thrown in. So, we'll listen to the recording now. A short recording, as I say. Listen for the half inch passing over in this recording at Landshut. 

Now, I'm going to leave you with one more recording of half inch on passage. And on this occasion, it's October 2022, once again, at Landsort in Sweden.  Now, in this recording, the main species in the background is common redpoll. There's a large group going over. But there's also multiple half inch in this recording.

And it's quite a nice recording because it's giving these sea calls, and you also hear several tick calls in this recording. Once again, it's multiple birds. I'm not sure how many exactly are involved. At least two or three, I would say. What a nice recording from the point of view that again, it's both calls the C calls and the tick calls from half inch.

Once again, a typical album scene and just a wonderful recording of birds passing overhead. Have a listen folks. This is the last recording. This is half inch overhead at Landsort, Sweden in October, 2022. 

So there you go. That's just a brief little kind of synopsis on the calls you may expect from passage half inch. along the coastline in late autumn.  It's a species that you can learn the call of quite easily. It's very, very distinctive by ear. And it's one of those species that once you get your ear in on the call, you will begin to pick the species up more and more.

So I would say if you were a regular VisMig watcher, this is one call you really need to learn. So hopefully this gives you a little bit of an appetite for learning the calls of the species. And if you're out during the autumn, I wish you good luck with this species. I always love to get a half inch on passage.

They're fantastic birds and you can get a good view as well. They're absolutely wonderful birds, beautiful birds. And like I say, the species I just love to get on a morning of autumn passage. That's about it now from this sound magazine here on wild bird acoustics. I hope you find these useful folks. I hope you find them educational.

And of course, I hope they help you to find more birds in the fields.  As always, folks, I'd like to thank you for listening to us here at Wild Bird Acoustics, and I hope you have enjoyed the short sound magazine.  

 Now there you go folks that's a very short sound magazine on the sound identification of half inch. We're going to move along straight away and I have a wonderful, wonderful sound magazine for you now. Quite a long sound magazine and in 2024 I spent a large amount of time recording at Sandmar Reserve.

 I had an absolutely incredible time and generally speaking I was arriving at about midnight recording through the night and the scenes there on the meadows were quite wonderful and then as woodlands just burst into sound and I got some absolutely incredible audio and had some wonderful experiences as a result.

 Now I'm going to share some of that audio with you today and I hope you very much enjoy it. Sit back, get your headphones on and relax and have a listen to this.  This is Echoes from the Woodlands.  

 Now you're all very welcome to another soundscape here at Wild Bird Acoustics, and we're going to start off with a wonderful recording for you. It was recorded at night at about 3am on Flooded Meadow at Sandimar Reserve in the middle of May 2024. It's recorded with Sennheiser 8020 stereo mics. And it's quite an incredible soundscape.

Basically, it's Lapwing in display. There's also a background of Barnacle Goose, displaying Common Snipe, and also some Redshank. Now, this is a wonderful, wonderful soundscape. I'm going to give you a list of that first and enjoy this folks. This was recorded at Sandemeyer on the 26th of May, 2024. 

Now, that's a wonderful way to start a sound magazine, I think an absolutely incredible scene and it was a joy just to be there. Now, all of these recordings in this section were recorded on nocturnal trips between the Midnight on about 7 a. m. in the morning. And there were the hours really that I concentrated on this spring in 2024. 

I used the Sennheiser microphones, the 8020 array, and they were quite wonderful for this type of recording. Quite often you can get close to the subjects. And that was the case in this next recording.  Now the next recording was recorded at Augusta Reserve, south of Stockholm City. And the main subject here was bittern.

There was a bird booming in the reed beds close to the woodland. So that's what I set up for. You'll hear the bird booming after about 30 seconds in the next soundscape. Also in this recording, there's some nice Savvy's Warbler just beginning to give a little bit of reeling after about 1 minute 35 seconds.

Also in here you have Grey Lagoose, very very raucous. Blue Tits in the woodland, Sedge Warbler in the red beds. Redwing is singing throughout. There's a little bit of lesser White Throat towards the end.  and also black headed ghoul. We'll have a listen to that now. Now listen for the bit in here after about 30 seconds.

It's a wonderful bit of audio. 

Now we're going to move to a place called Hog Iron and next recording is a wonderful woodland soundscape. This is very early in the morning and the main subject here is garden warbler. Now there's an awful lot going on in the background as well. It's just as the sun is rising and in the background here you will hear calling cuckoo, blackbird, willow warbler in song, wood pigeon in song, chaffinch, Distant crane, just giving their dawn chorus, spotted flycatcher calls, and even a tiny bit of icterine warbler. 

There's a fantastic ambience here from insects buzzing around in the undergrowth, where the array was just placed, and it makes for a wonderful, wonderful recording altogether. I'm going to play that for you now. This is a singing Garden er at Hogar in Sweden on the 22nd of May, 2022. 

So if you have any questions, please let me know. I will be happy to help you out. I hope you take the time to read my blog. I hope you read this book. Take care. David, This is David here. We've got a few questions. the new method of understanding the universe. Um, Um, Um, You 

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 

Now we're gonna go a little bit further back in time to the 24th of March when I visited a place called Svarsnes and that is located at Sandamar Reserve in Sweden and the species I was looking for was a black woodpecker.  Now I spent a lot of time looking for the species this spring and I had a reasonable amount of success at this location.

On this particular day I came across an oddled pair and they were just feeding together in the woodland and I staked them out for about four hours in total. I got some lovely calls. What you're going to hear now is the contact call of a male black woodpecker. It's just softly calling in the woodland to the female just to stay in contact.

It's a slightly shorter recording, just over a minute long, and I'm going to play that for you now. This is the contact call of black woodpecker. 

Now, a lovely recording there, and I just love that call. There's a lot going on in that recording in the background, and it just makes for a wonderful soundscape. You've got singing Goldfinch right through it,  Yellowhammer in song. There's a couple of calls of a green woodpecker, starling, grey legged goose, displaying snipe, some jackdaw and also stock dove. 

Now, the bird stayed in the area, as I say, for about four hours, and I got another nice short recording here of some contact calls and also the flight call of the male as it moved off out of the area, calling to the female as it went. And she was just giving the contact call back through the woodland.

We'll have a listen to that now. This is the flight and contact call of Black Woodpecker. 

For the next recording, we moved to a place called  Carradlanton. It's close to Augusta Reserve. It's a large area of woodland, and this was where I found my first singing pied flycatcher of the year. I set up my gear and went to record the bird. It was very, very early in the morning, and it was an awful lot going on in the background.

On the lake here in the background there's a black headed gull colony and of a grey legged goose and black headed gull going absolutely bonkers in the background. Also here in the woodlands you will hear blue tit, will o warbler, stock dove.  Eurasian bittern also booms once in this recording at about 2 minutes and 26 seconds.

Have a listen for that. There's song thrush in song, wood pigeon, wren and the calls of hooded crow. This is about 4 minutes and 20 seconds long. Have a listen, it's a lovely recording. 

Um, Yeah. Uh, Uh, So it's the same. Yeah. Uh, Uh, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

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uh, Um, uh, Um, uh, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and don't forget to like, comment and subscribe! 

Yeah. Yeah. Mhm Thanks. Mhm. 

Thank you. 

Now, I didn't actually just record with the Sennheiser Array. I actually spent a bit of time just wandering around at times with the Tilinga Parabola. And I was looking for new areas to record, just checking out bits of woodland to see what species were around, in the hope I might come across something new.

I got this lovely recording a couple of strophes of Cuckoo Song, just east of Augusta Reserve near a large lake there, and I thought I'd just play that quickly for you now. So this is quite a nice recording of a singing cuckoo. There's thrush nightingale and blackbird,  the main species, singing in the background.

Have a quick listen to this. 

Now, I'm going to give you another Tlingit Parabola recording. This is Common Chiffchaff in song, and the main species here, quite close by, is a Singing Male Chaffinch. Also further back in the distance, there's Willow Orbeler, Wood Pigeon, and Grey Leggoose.  But this is quite a nice clear recording, and in between the strophes of main song, you can hear the tret calls, they're just single notes given by the bird, in between strophes.

So it's quite a nice recording. This is Common Chief Chaff. It was recorded at Borough Reserve on the 4th of May, 2024.  Have a listen. 

Now, the Tlingit parabola I found is very useful when you're out recording long soundscapes with a stereo array like the Sennheiser array that I use. And quite often I actually deploy that for up to an hour at a time. And while that's actually recording, it's quite nice to have the parabola just to move away and explore the area.

And I get quite a lot of nice recordings in this way. So what you're going to hear next is an example of a black cap just moving around the undergrowth, giving subsong.  So it's just basically chuckling away to itself.  In the background here, there's quite a few Willa Warbler in full song. Place was full of them on the day.

And also on 21 seconds, you will hear a single strove of Rhineck song. So that's quite nice. There's also blue tit in the area, which many of you will recognize, no doubt. But the main subject here was a black cap just moving around in undergrowth giving subsong. So we'll have a listen to that next folks. 

Now, something a little bit different now. This next recording was recorded with a Wildlife Acoustics SM Mini, and it comes from the roof of the bird observatory at Landsort in Sweden, but it's not actually a bird passing overhead. Quite close to the recorder, a few years ago, they erected a few swift nest boxes.

And in the last couple of years, a few pairs have moved in and started to breed on the island, and it's absolutely fantastic to have them. When you're staying at the observatory in the summer, the birds are just feeding, moving around in front of the observatory and feeding young in the nest boxes. What this means as well is every morning, just around dawn, I get this lovely chorus of Swift and it's quite remarkable.

I really enjoy these calls. So what I'm going to play for you now is a three minute section of kind of Swifts waking up in nest boxes in the morning. Now, it's hard to know exactly what's going on here. I suspect it's female birds. They're probably in laying eggs and incubating and calling in the morning.

The males are probably already on the wing. Indeed, I'm not even sure if the males actually come in to the nest box at night. But anyway, this is a lovely sound. This is common swifts in a nest box in the morning, just after dawn at Landsort in Sweden, in early May, 2024. 

Now, another Tillinga Prabla recording here, and this was very short. This is a yellow whitetail male in song at a place called Fissingen, and it's a wonderful reserve just north of Stockholm city. On the day, I just found a few birds in song in some wet meadow, and there was a road quite close by, and it was a little bit noisy.

But I did manage to get a few reasonable short recordings of the birds. So this is going to be short and sweet. It's a nice recording of a male western yellow white tail in full song, a blue headed bird. Have a listen, folks. 

Now quite often when you're moving around with the Tlingit, you grab a lot of very short recordings. And I'm quite interested in bird call in general. And this is the call of lesser white throat.  Now this bird was recorded at Augusta Reserve, and I was just moving around after leaving the Sennheisers down. 

And what happened was, a bird just started to give a quick burst of calls. So I just grabbed a quick recording. Again, this is a very short recording, but very useful I think. There's a little bit of handling noise here from the Tlingit, which is a little bit annoying. But still quite useful. It's a nice record of lesser white throat call.

Have a listen here also for a nice bit of Stuck Dove song. 

Now I'm going to close out this sound recording with a long recording. It's a quite wonderful recording in many ways. And in another, it is slightly annoying because there's a little bit of road noise. Now, sometimes you can't actually choose where the birds actually start to sing, call or perform well for the microphones.

And on this case, it was quite close to a road. It was about seven thirty in the morning, and I came across this pair of black woodpecker. Now, the birds were in a place called Svartzenes, and I actually staked these birds out for about four hours.  I was a little bit unlucky in the sense that it was later in the morning when they really became very active and started to call a lot.

But I did get this wonderful long recording. Now, I don't like to edit too much. I don't like to rip out things like road noise because I find that actually takes out a lot of the ambience and any of the lower calls, which is wood pigeon and stock dove get badly affected. Now, this is actually quite a wonderful recording.

Nevertheless. This is a pair of adult black woodpecker on territory. You can hear the birds feeding, giving contact calls,  and on several occasions, giving flight calls. Now what happens here basically is the birds are moving around, you can hear them feeding, they're calling to each other, giving contact calls, before the female eventually moves away calling, and you can hear her flying into the distance, giving the flight call.

And eventually then, the male who was still in the area is giving contact calls, trying to locate the mate, and he flies off in the direction she left him. So, while all that was going on, there's a quite amazing soundscape in the background. There's Blue Tit, singing Yellow Hammer, Golden Eye Wingbeats overhead, singing Songthrush, Stockdove, there's Starling moving around the area calling, Skylark.

A group of long tailed tit move through at one stage, some grey tits, wood pigeon in song, some calling red shank, singing chaffinch, there's a nice passage of great spotted woodpecker, you can hear wing beats and calls, and even a passage grey heron.  So I'm going to leave you with this folks, it's a long recording, like I say, just over 7 minutes, but it's a wonderful passage of audio.

So once again, a pair of adult black woodpecker. Giving flight and contact calls, and you can also hear them feeding in this wonderful recording. So 

there you go, folks, there's a random sound magazine, more or less some random recordings from the spring of 2024.  It's kind of nice just to jump around different areas that are recorded and just bring you some different kind of recordings,  some soundscapes and some shorter recordings of just little interesting tidbits that I picked up with the Talinga Prabla.

And of course that lovely Swift recording, which was recorded with the SM mini on the roof of the Bird Observatory at Landsort in Sweden.  So that's it for me here on this cell magazine at wild bird acoustics. As always, thanks very much for listening, folks. It's very much appreciated. We'll see you next time on the podcast.

Thanks 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.