Birdsong (no sighting): "What's the day today?" Brandon Marsh, Warwickshire, UK (1 Viewer)

[The Octagon]

Birdsong (no sighting): "What's the day today?" Brandon Marsh, Warwickshire, UK

Heard many times first from a bird hide tonight (and then throughout the reserve), on my first evening visit to Brandon Marsh. This song was new both to myself and to my companion. It had the articulation and clarity of a passerine. A good mnemonic for the rhythm is "What's the day today?" In musical notation, something like:

dotted quaver, semiquaver, dotted quaver, semiquaver, crotchet

The melodic contour (in Parsons code, which I haven't seen used amongst birders, but which I think would be helpful in describing much birdsong) was *DDRU.

This phrase was sounded in groups of three, and was heard almost simultaneously from several birds at different distances. There was no variation in the melody or rhythm.

I have listened to all of (the first few seconds of) the likely-looking recordings on my British National Sound Archive birdsong CD, for those birds whose song I don't already know, but I can not identify it. Does anyone have any ideas, please?

 

[Jane Turner]

Try Reed Bunting

 

[bitterntwisted]

Excellent description, and I believe Jane has given your answer.

 

[The Octagon]

Try Reed Bunting

Hmm, that's interesting. Having listened to this recording, the basic melody and rhythm are almost spot on, but that bird seems to flow its notes together more than the birds I heard, whose song (I think) had five much more distinct, staccato notes. But that could be attributed to the fact that, since I heard the birds, I've shoehorned their actual, organic song into several different mnemonic boxes, and have oversimplified it. Or maybe there's local variation. This might be a job for the iPod in the field on a return visit. Thanks, Jane!

 

[KnockerNorton]

songs of most birds are very variable, but that is distinctive is their quality and rhythm. And you've picked up on the stilted staccato nature of Reed Bunting song very well - don't get too bogged down in the actual notes. It's the 'sound' that counts, not what it's saying.

 

[Jane Turner]

Different Reed Bunting have slightly different songs... but all sound like they can't really be bothered singing that much and they go on ad infinitum.

 

[midlandbirder]

was at brandon today cettis warblers were calling everywhere, and there were a few reed buntings around to.

 

[RICHARD DAWKINS]

Hi Octagon
We was listening to it last night and some Crake recordings was played back to it if it's the same 1 we was listening to it's not reed bunting,it is a Crake or Rail but after a while another started calling so it came down to Water Rail which is calling that we have not heard before and ther was no change in the call it was the same throughout and i think that the Bumbling Bears & Richard Mays came to the same conclusion in the end ???

 

[The Octagon]

Hi Richard,

I don't think we were listening to the same bird. I've listened to the corncrake and water rail recordings from my CD, and they sound completely different from what I was hearing. I think my inability to identify the bird from its song is most likely due to my lack of birding experience, rather than it being an unusual bird.

I'm not quite convinced that it was the reed bunting: the thing I heard had the stridency (and a lot of the notes) that I can hear in recordings of Cetti's warbler, which midlandbirder suggested, but also a lot of similarity to the reed bunting in melody. I intend to go back soon and make a recording that I can post here.

 

[The Octagon]

I went back to Brandon this evening with my minidisc recorder and recorded two hours of audio as I sat in hides and walked around. This allowed me to capture the mystery bird's song many times. After spending an hour in the hide where I first heard it, getting several so-so recordings, I left the hide and then heard it twice in succession, so loud that the bird must almost have been sitting on my head. Here is the loudest:

[streaming audio] (If the streaming Ogg player doesn't work for you, try this [enormous WAV file] instead.)

(Apologies for the loud rustling at the start: that's me walking and coming to a halt.)

I've Christened it the Mr Punch bird, because it now sounds to me like Mr Punch from Punch and Judy saying "That's the way to do it!", but missing the final syllable. In the recording, it only repeats the phrase two times: sometimes it was two and sometimes three, never more or less.

Having had the opportunity to hear the bird on a second visit, and then to play the sounds back over and over again, I'm now convinced that it isn't a reed bunting, and is probably a Cetti's warbler. (The r.b.'s tune fit my mnemonics, but the timbre is just plain wrong.) It doesn't have exactly the same rhythm/tune as the other Cetti's recordings that I've heard, but I'm putting that down to regional/idiolectal variation. (The bird or birds that I've heard always sing the phrase in the same way, so in a single bird there doesn't seem to be much room for improvisation.)

So, could someone please confirm that it is a Cetti's warbler? Or is it something else?

 

[midlandbirder]

definitely cettis warbler

 

[skatebirder]

It's interesting to me to see how one person's rendering of a Cetti's Warbler song can be confused with the song of a Reed Bunting. I assume that, having once heard a Reed Bunting in the field, no-one would think they were listening to a Cetti's Warbler...?
I notice that the Cetti's in Hampshire seem to have regional accents - most of the ones on my local patch have a rhythm which sounds to me something like the phrase:
"Hey! What do-you want? What do-you want?",
while the ones a few miles down the coast have a totally different rhythm. They do somehow always manage to sound like Cetti's Warblers.

David

 

[bitterntwisted]

Cetti's without doubt. Shows how even the most detailed description of a sound fails because people hear them so differently.

Graham

 

[The Octagon]

Yes, I tried to be as precise as possible, but that still didn't nail it. And it's funny how your memory plays tricks on you when you're over-eager to tally up your recollection of a call with what seems like the nearest possible match. Next time I think I'll just try whistling it -- or maybe playing it on the keyboard in a variety of voices (tubular bells, anyone? dog pianist or slap bass?).

Thanks everyone for your responses: without them I would have driven myself mad in search of an ID.