Gail asked -

> The recordings that I have ( Thayer's Birds of NA, Peterson NA Birds, and
> Cornell's Western Bird Songs) don't show much difference in the "tooting"
> call of the Saw-whet versus the Pygmy. The Pygmies I hear around here,
> however, give a much slower series of toots than any of the recordings.
> The speed of toots seemed to increase as nesting time approach, as did the
> length of time spent tooting. The only slow tooting recording I've heard
> was made by a local birder out of Nelson(Birds of the Kootenays by John
> Neville). Can any one comment?

Yes, the rapidity of tooting in Pygmies is much slower than a Saw-whet:
Saw-whets rate is about 2 toots/second in full bore; whereas, a Pygmy is
lucky to get to about 1 toot/5-10 seconds. Pygmies can call at all times
of the year - I have heard them at dawn in October in Bowron Lakes P.P. -
whereas Saw-whets tooting is restricted to the spring courtship season.

- Jack

P.S. Gail, please check your formatting of your messages. They are coming
in as one big long sentence without line breaks. Try setting the length of
your messages to around 78 characters.




Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca