Give Me A Call

Day 307 (Part Two): Today I tried a different tack with my little friends in the Nisqually Land Trust property in Ohop Valley: I took along a manual bird call, a device made by the Audubon Society and one I haven't felt compelled to use for many years. Basically, it's a wooden bead on a metal spindle. With the application of a little resin, it can be made to chirp in quite a variety of tones. Anyone can make it "tweet," but it requires a bit of practice to create a note capable of fooling a given species of bird.

I'd like to say I practiced a call before leaving home, but I did not. In the first place, I didn't think to do so. In the second, available sound files tend to be taken from out of region, and although the basic call will be the same, there are dialectic differences (sometimes quite strong) in other areas. Think of English as spoken by a Pacific Northwesterner or a Southerner. Bird language is spoken with the same variations of tone.

I put the bird call around my neck with the camera and walked slowly up the road making a random assortment of squeaks. I must have punched someone's buttons because a female goldfinch popped into a nearby tree and sassed me. Then I heard "rrrr-pip-BEEyur" in the forest and tried to imitate it with the device. The burr at the beginning of the call was impossible for me to create, but after several tries, I could reliably produce the "pip-BEEyur" portion. Spacing it out as naturally as possible, I "chirped" several times over the next five minutes. All of a sudden, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Immediately, I picked up the camera and zoomed in on the shaded hole in the branches where I'd seen a flutter. Lo and behold, there was one of the Flycatchers I've been trying to ID! I got a quick, poor shot for documentation purposes and then "chirped" again. My little friend popped up onto a branch, looked toward me...and answered the call! In the process of trying to focus on the bird, I allowed sunlight to glint off the lens, causing him to dart back into cover. I "chirped" again a few times, and the curious little fellow again landed on a branch in the open, but not quite in full view.

This process went on for a while, interrupted once by a passing car. Finally, Mr. Flycatcher took up the position you see here. We exchanged calls several times, and now I am happy to say that yes, this is definitely a Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii), based on his call of ""rrrr-pip-BEEyur"" and his not-so-identifiable markings.