Getting All Excited About Scottish Crossbill !

I am in process of re-evaluating some of my early recordings for a couple of upcoming papers (finally), one of which is now drafted and just needs the supporting sonagrams and pictures compiled and added in. Raking through the material I came across this sonagram, probably one of my best ever of a Scottish Crossbill, recorded near its nest at Glen Tanar on 11th April 2005 ( yes I really have been doing this stuff since then ! EDIT: actually, since 2004):

Scottish Crossbill Excitement Call

A fantastically clear sonagram of a typical Excitement Call C (EcC) diagnostic of Scottish Crossbill per Summers et al, 2002. The really amazing thing is this was recorded with my Czech Monocor short gun microphone (which was as noisy as hell) and my first Mini Disc recorder a Sony MZ-710 ! Not a Telinga or Fostex in sight ! Just shows you what you can do with a bit of fieldcraft (and field time) and the right conditions ( there was no wind and the bird was alarming about 12 feet away from the mic). In those pre HiMD days I had to re-record ALL the tracks  from the line out into Audio Lab via the computer and then process the sonagrams using a program called GRAM32.

I should add that this call type is now quite rare, having only recorded it in this form a few 'handful and footfall' times. Some interesting material regarding the call structures of Scottish Crossbills is imminent.....all is not what it seems, keep tuned.