>Relevant to the interesting thread we had going a while back on automatic
>logging of the presence of birds, including identifying their species,
>from sound recordings: see the NY Times Science Page for today, Oct. 3,
>for a good article about Bill Evans' work at Cornell on tracking the
>nocturnal passage of migrants over NY State. A slightly unfortunate photo
>has him squatting in a field with his apparatus, looking like ET trying to
>phone home, but the graphs resulting from his 3,500 hours of recorded
>flight calls from 7 sites are fascinating. I'd love to see what similar
>results for Washington would look like.
>
> James West

The one thing I can predict is that the lines on the graphs would be a
*whole lot* lower. I've spent probably hundreds of hours over the years
I've lived here listening for nocturnal migrants, probably dozens of hours
looking at the full moon through a spotting scope, and I can testify that
little tweety-birds going over the area at night are sparse indeed! The
contrast between this and similar attempts in Florida has been dramatic.
We're really not on a mainline migration route for passerines, and/or there
is more *diurnal* migration (feeding on the move) of them than there is in
the East. On a few occasions, while camped at the outer coast, I have
heard impressive numbers of thrushes and sparrows overhead.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416