Bluebirds & Crossbills

Yesterday I shot about 16 minutes of video, which was mostly just a nest cavity with little spurts of activity. This has been edited down to the video linked below, which is a little over 1.5 minutes. The Mountain Bluebird chicks are being fed by mom in the first segment (brief glimpse of a chick just before she arrives at about 5 seconds), then dad in the third. In the middle segment (which begins at about 35 seconds and ends at 1:20) it looks like one of the chicks is exercising its wings, the end of the wing visible fluttering about in the cavity. Things to listen for include a Grace's Warbler shortly after the beginning, then off and on throughout the clips (there's also a couple of occasional faint buzzes from a Western Wood-pewee in this segment). At about 27 seconds a Mountain Chickadee can be heard, faint Pygmy Nuthatches at about 48 seconds, Common Raven (clearly!) at about 1:07, and a Western Tanager just before the male shows up in the 3rd clip.

The audio file is about 3 minutes long, also starts with a Grace's Warbler, then some faint chirps from a Red Crossbill that are followed soon after by the same type of chirp, though much louder (at about 19 or 20 seconds). Beginning at around 1 minute the cacophony begins, with constant bantering among the crossbills for the next 2 minutes, increasing at about the 2 minute mark. This actually goes on for nearly 6 minutes total in my raw file, but I think you'll more than get the picture in 3 minutes. There are other bird sounds mixed in, especially the Grace's.

For the Mountain Bluebird video (Flash, 11 megs) click here . . .

To listen to the Red Crossbills (.mp3, 3 megs) click here . . .