Cold weather sounds

[Ross Ahmed]

Interesting note on Portland website about thrushes giving strange noises. See: http://www.portlandbirdobs.org.uk/aa_latestnews.htm

I noticed a small group of 3 Song Thrushes on a beach yesterday giving thin, high-pitched calls - quite different to the usual tics and chaks.

This calls are presumably stress-related as a result of cold weather.

Anybody noticed any other species giving odd noises of late?

[mafting]

The thin high-pitched thing is a normal alarm call. Blackbirds and other thrushes give similar calls. They're ventriloqual too - they use it for aerial predators, or when they're exposed, to as to throw their voice and not give their location away, but at the same time be able to give the alarm. It was probably in response to you being relatively high on their horizon, and them being exposed on the beach.

Birds don't give 'stress calls' unless they're in something's clutches. The point then is attract others to mob/distract the predator into letting it go. 'Stress calls' (as such) are loud, raucous and screechy/screamy.

[Ross Ahmed]

I think mafting you're using the term 'stress calls' as jargon, whereas I was using it in it's wider sense i.e. a bodily tension.

There wasn't much normal about their calls....but again need to be careful how we're defining normal here. I aimed to get a recording today but a blasting easterly put pay to that.

The birds have actually been in the same spot for about the past week, giving the same calls continuously...whether I've been close to them or not. To be honest though, their odd noises didn't register until I read the Portland website.

[MichaelF]

The Portland recordings sound like argumentation due to overcrowding with birds trying to shout about their rights to personal space in a crowded situation. I've heard similar sounds before from tight flocks.