Friday, March 28, 2008

Great Tit Repertoire Samples

For the past two weeks I've woken before 5 am. Sleep problems are not to blame. Just an extremely hyperactive Great Tit with unusually loud vocals. The bird begins singing a whole hour before sunrise, even when it is raining, from a large ornamental conifer in the street outside. At around 0445h it starts with song type 1 (see sonogram below) and continues, rarely pausing for longer than 30 seconds, until about 0530h. Then it stops, and rarely sings again all morning. Occasionally it switches song type - see sonograms 2 and 3 - but its repertoire is mainly composed of repeated phrases of a rapid double note at around 4 kHz followed by a higher note spanning 4 to 5 kHz. I've listened to a lot of Great Tits but this one is particularly incessant and louder than is typical. So this morning, without need for an alarm clock, I woke up to the major and went out and made some recordings. I'm beginning to suspect that it also sings louder when a plane flies overhead. Something to investigate further...

1 comment:

Warren Baker said...

Fraser,
It's certainly true that the louder the background noise is, the louder the songster gets!!