Nocturnal Flight Call Recording in LA County

Andy Birch

Tue, Apr 13, 2021 7:00 PM

Are your dreams sometimes filled with birds? Perhaps, it’s because they are flying over you as you sleep! You may have heard that a vast multitude of birds migrate at night. While it is now fairly popular to watch birds migrating at daytime, you may have wondered, how on earth can we experience bird migration at night? Andy will try to help you unlock the secrets of how to witness and record this hidden bird migration happening across our skies at night.

Andy has been birding LA County for 25 years and lives with his young family in Los Feliz. He can usually be found birding Griffith Park and the LA River around Glendale and Los Feliz. Over the past 30 years, he has illustrated identification plates for field guides and birding magazines in North America and Europe.

Here is a video of the talk:

And here are some links to useful resources about nocturnal flight calls:

NFC Facebook Group

Nocmig and Night Migrants with useful info for beginners

Simon Mitchell YouTube video on how to set up Audacity and use it for NFCs

Bill Evans and Michael O’Brien revolutionary guide online. Majority are eastern emphasis.

Also 1000s of Evans’ spectrograms organized by species.

Paul Driver also has lots of NFC calls but an eastern emphasis.

Andy Birch’s Google Sheet for LA County Flight Calls

Bibliography of Nocturnal Flight Call Sources

eBird > “search photos and sounds” and use the “call” or “flight call” filter

Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds (not specifically NFC).

Xeno-Canto

The Sound Approach to Birding (European)