The Second Recorder

I wanted to make this second post, a "part 2" if you will, on the results of my first outing of the year on March, 20th. This distinction is useful because on that outing I had a second audio recorder rolling, and its results were better than my in-camp recorder on a phenomenal scale. While my in-camp audio recorder did capture some great vocals and wood knocks as discussed in this other thread: First Trip of the Year - March, 2010, the results from my remote recorder were so extensive that I didn't want to risk confusing the two, and have people thinking that I could actually hear all these other vocals from my campsite location, I couldn't (if I had I probably would have bugged out).

I've posted two dozen audio highlights from a recorder and parabolic microphone which was positioned to the northwest, on the back side of the ridge north of my camp, and in the direction of the original vocals I captured with the in-camp recorder. The access road to my campsite passed not far from where the parabolic was placed in the forest. And the parabolic was aimed northeast, to cover the flanks of the ridge between it and my camp, the floor of the valley below, and the flanks of a large ridge a half mile to the north.

The recordings from the remotely place parabolic are on the same page as the snippets from my in-camp recorder, and can be distinguished by their file names which begin with WS500* (the model of recorder in use). All the in-camp audio files from my earlier post begin with WS310* (*additional numbers deleted). And the link to the audio collection is:


http://sites.google.com/site/mongahela/myrecordings2010-1

While each of the audio samples includes a brief descriptive text along with it, I'll offer here a few words on why I chose the audio samples that I did.

The first five audio snippets I thought notable because they demonstrate that wood knocks and vocals can occur during the day time. These were captured between 2:00PM and 8:00PM on March 20th. They also show potential for substantiating the hypothesis that wood knocks and vocals may serve to announce the arrival of a human on the scene. Notes next to each audio sample extend this speculation.

Beginning at 9:09 p.m. that evening, the parabolic began to pick up howls, bark, hoots, and much later, whoops, that grew in volume and intensity, before fading away to intermittent periods of quiet. This activity was most intense up until about 1 a.m. that night, but occasional outbursts of the same vocals were captured until as late as almost 5:00 a.m. on the 21st.

Early in the recordings, the vocals are very owl-like, or very dog-like. But the owl is noticeably loud, louder than other owl vocals captured that night. But as time goes by in the recordings, and as demonstrated in the audio samples, the hoots and barks tend to lose their form. By 9:30 the barks occasionally ascend in a slight whoop-like fashion. Not a clear whoop, but losing that canine sound. Also by 9:30, the first wood knocks begin to appear intermixed with the vocals.

There are a series of three or four key audio samples that are most noteworthy in this collection. One demonstrates an association between the bark vocals and wood knocks. Another demonstrates wood knocks associated with the loud owl hoots. Yet another key sample offers the first association of the hoot vocals and the bark vocals with each other (with wood knocks included). An important feature of this sample is the differing tone between the hoots and barks, indicating two different speakers are involved, and each making a unique type of vocal. This is demonstrated again in audio samples from later in the evening, and indicates that the two vocalizers were moving together over the course of the evening.

Based upon the substantiation established in those key samples described above, I carved out a few more interesting samples. Some are better versions of whoop-like barks. Some include faint whoops that you have to listen closely to hear. Some demonstrate a ululating form and other combine howls, whoops, barks and wood knocks all in one segment. And the owl hoots become noticeably absent in some of the later samples. They seem to have been replaced with howl-like vocals.

And at the end of the collection I added a very unique vocal, unlike any I've ever heard before. It's a higher pitched voice, possibly not one of the two speakers described above, and it lets out a short wailing call that sounds to me like "wahoo". It could be an owl call, but I've never heard an owl make a call like that. However it is unusual and I share it for your enjoyment.

Please feel free to share your opinions, good, bad or indifferent. I know some folks won't hear what I or others hear, and that's ok. I want to get all the opinions and angles I can and make this a useful conversation.