Surprisingly loud! My nature mission for 2012 is to make a conscious effort to learn more bird songs and calls. I know what the obvious things sound like, robins, magpies and pigeons etc, but sometimes I hear something and I will know its not a sound I recognise.
So I am listening to the songs and calls and aiming to identify those I do know, but also figure out what is making the sounds I don’t know. Sometimes I just have to write down as much information about the song or call and where I heard it to work out later. But of course the easiest way to figure out what is making a particular song is to find the bird making it! Not always easy, I grant you, but today it worked. I heard a loud, single note, a sort of ‘twee!’ sound, not exactly what you would describe as beautiful and if anything a little shouty. I located the area of trees the shouty sound was coming from then saw some movement. At first I thought it was a lesser spotted woodpecker from the size and the fact it was, well, pecking. But when I looked through my camera lens (didn’t have binoculars with me) it turned out to be a nuthatch! Take a listen to the nuthatch call. The pecking behaviour was the nuthatch chiselling open an acorn or nut that it had wedged in the tree.
I managed to fire off a couple of shots before it flew off, apologies for the quality. Getting a decent image of a nuthatch has always alluded me!
