Birding While Sound Asleep - or - Using Flight Calls to Follow Bird Migration

David L. Martin

Many birds, including warblers and sparrows, migrate at night, and they call as they fly. Some species can be identified from their calls either by listening or by viewing sonograms. For several years David Martin has been following the progress of fall migration by recording nocturnal flight calls at two locations in Albany County. He detects hundreds of calls on some nights and many thousands of calls each season. He will show how to identify birds from flight calls and present some of his results on the migration individual species. He also will discuss the relationship of flight call counts to wind, weather and radar observations. One of his goals is to develop baseline values for the timing of fall migration, as such data could be useful for observing changes in migration timing in response to climate change.

David Martin is a retired biochemist and neuroscientist. He is a lifelong birder and has been recording natural sounds for many years. Some of these recordings can be found on his website naturebits.org. He is one of the many former presidents of the Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club.