No images for this one, because it’s been a slower week and all of the photos that I’ve gotten are subjects that have been featured before. So it’s strictly audio this time – well, and my typical exposition. These are all night recordings, which should become obvious, and all recorded right from the backyard. I was using an Azden SGM-2X unidirectional shotgun mic with a wind guard on an Olympus VN-8100PC audio recorder, since I’ve never splurged (yet) for a higher-end recorder. All clips had a little noise reduction done to cut down the normal background hiss, and one was amplified a little, but for all, I’d recommend headphones.
First up, we have a few different frog species inhabiting the pond.
They think it’s spring
If you noticed a trickling sound in the latter half of the recording, that was the rain starting as I stood on the edge of the pond – there isn’t enough flow to produce the noise of running water. Meanwhile, we have the sharp peeps of the spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer,) the deeper short sounds of what is likely a southern leopard frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus,) and the background mutter, heard before, that is a toss-up between Atlantic coast leopard frogs (Lithobates kauffeldi) and wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus) – with such a chorus of them in the middle distance, it’s hard to tell if any single frog is repeating or not. You can find the specific calls of these at this page.
On another night, we had a slightly different set of sounds.
Probably not a cougar
Up front, the drawn-out creaking growl is likely a gopher frog (Lithobates capito,) but now some of the muttering, duck-like calls can be heard individually, repeating a few times – these lend weight to being wood frogs. Note that I have never seen either a gopher frog or a wood frog – these identifications are made only by the calls, but I’ll be trying to remedy that soon enough. All but a couple of these seemed to emanate from the far side of the pond, which is marshy and soft, so getting up close and spotting them might be tricky, more so by the headlamp, though we’ll see what happens.
One day while observing the wood ducks, I witnessed a male appearing to lead a few others around with very faint peeping calls, and right at dusk one night, I could have sworn I heard that from the upper end of the pond near the nest box. If correct, this would mean that they’re actually roosting on the nearby portion of the pond rather than down through the channel on the lower bayou where they always seemed to disappear. So the following night, I went out with the audio recorder and got no ducks, just the same ol’ frogs, but then a fierce wind suddenly roared up.
Came up abruptly
When the volume jumps in the middle, that’s when I turned and aimed the mic into the trees, and yes, you hear a branch snap off and hit the ground, while something else hits the metal roof over the AC units. I could see the treetops swaying wildly against the night sky, and could only estimate the windspeed, but it was a sudden squall type of gusting, on a night when no serious weather was predicted. Much credit to the ‘dead cat’ wind guard on the mic, because no thumping or rumbling of any kind can be heard, so a great test; I’d had to make this one myself because I couldn’t find one long enough for the Azden SGM-2X (it’s actually some faux-fur scarfy thing from Temu, with the backing removed, folded and stitched into a tube.)
And lastly, we have this capture, that I’ve finally been lucky enough to get.
No, we don’t live by a rainforest
Those, all of them (well, except for the frog croaking and background traffic,) are barred owls (Strix varia) – those are the sounds they make as mated pairs. I’ve been hearing the calls semi-regularly since we moved in though I have yet to catch even a glimpse of one around here. I had to amplify this recording a little, but likely not because of great distance – barred owls have a faint and echo-ey call that makes them sound twice as far away as they actually are, so if you hear them clearly, they’re generally within 50 meters. My guess is this pair was in the vicinity of the stream on the back side of the property across the pond (where the beaver lodge is.)
Man, spring is going to be off the hook.