Champions of the Flyway!

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Huge Redwing migration over Flamborough, 29th March '22

After the scoter barrage the night before, my clicker finger and notebook scribbling could've used a rest - but no such luck, with an epic night of Redwing migration over the village on the 29th.
That memorable previous Night of the Scoters included a very notable 485 Redwing registrations, with the two species often recorded simultaneously, as evidenced by the video-audio clips in the last post - including some lovely, evocative soundscapes augmented by the village church bells. The 29th, however, was all about the Redwings, with precisely zero scoters picked up by the recorder.

It was an almost constant deluge, from dusk to dawn, with particularly busy periods either side of midnight - but you could pick any 30-second frame of the spectrogram and they they are, tssup-ing over in their teaming masses, often really low. How many birds were involved, we'll never know, but a minimum of 2,256 registrations gives an idea of the numbers streaming over.....
My recorder is an old, non-directional hand-held MP3 recorder, in a clingfilm-covered plantpot in the garden - imagine how many would've been picked up by a fancier set-up (directional mic, parabola etc.)? No matter - my cheapo DIY set-up is serving me well.

 

It's been a particularly productive spring for nocmig Redwing registrations, with each night's counts (up to the end of March) now uploaded onto Trektellen here.