(no subject)

[camwyn]

The ravens are back. Yes, plural.

I was out in the backyard yesterday afternoon trying not to let the wind get to me- it was hardly as bad as it'd been the day before- when I heard GRONK, GROOOONK noises from across the street. A few seconds later I heard them from another direction. I got my bird sound ID app up and running and recorded several more of the noises, and the app definitely thought they were raven rather than crow noises; I assumed the different directions I was hearing them from simply reflected one bird on the move.






Wish I had a better pic but when I saw how fast they were moving overhead I knew I wasn't going to have time to get the camera out and powered up and focused properly. But these birds were definitely bigger than crows, had wedge-shaped rather than fan-shaped tails, and croaked rather than cawing.

Comments

[derien]

What do you use for a bird sound ID app? I think I've identified the call of a saw-whet owl, but of course I can't claim it in Merlin because I can't ID by sound.

[camwyn]

BirdNET. Records the sound while running an audiogram; you have to pause it before the part you want analyzed scrolls out of the buffer, then manually select the portion of the audiogram on screen that represents what you want analyzed.

[derien]

Ah. So I can't feed it a sound I already recorded? I recorded the owl the other night.

[camwyn]

Actually, if you recorded it in WAV format, I think you can use their website at https://birdnet.cornell.edu/api/ to make an ID. I've never actually tried that function, I admit.

Alternatively I'd say to go to whatbird.com, call up the saw-whet owl entry, play back the samples, and see if they sound like a close match. (Or just cut straight to https://identify.whatbird.com/obj/9/overview/Northern_Saw-whet_Owl.aspx for that matter.)