Birder Most Foul, Now with audio! [edited title]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is actually at the root of it a General Question; but I am going to have to do a lot of bitching first, so it’s here instead. Bear with me.

Never in my life have I fervently wished for the death of another creature, except possibly Dubya. Never have I remotely wished to own a falcon; yet now I find myself obsessively wishing I did, or that I was dating a falconer. I would simply shoot the thing if I could, but I have not once managed to actually see it. From the deafening, piercing volume of its call, it should be right outside my window. Perhaps it can vanish at will, like all corrupted and evil things.

There is this bird. I call it the 5 a.m. bird. It goes “chih!” on a single pitch roughly corresponding to middle C. I say roughly because it is in no wise a pure tone – it has all kinds of unnatural, grating stuff going on in that utterance. On an oscilloscope, the waveform would be a demonic sigil that would call up the bird equivalent of Cthulhu. Or drive you utterly, irrevocably mad.

The bird is fond of going “chih!” while flying in a broad circle, so that you get a Doppler effect going on:

ih chih chih cHIH CHIH CHIh chih chih ch

Now, I love mockingbirds. I love crows, especially that cool sound they make with their beaks. I love seagulls and great honking geese and bluejays. But this is not a sound; it is a weapon!

I have made sudden sharp sounds out my window at this bird to get it to shut up. I have done hawk calls, since most birds have the sense to go away from something 50 times your size that wants to eat you. The bird has nerves of steel and the benefit of perverse persistence.

If my cat is inclined to yawn, stretch, and casually stroll along the roof outside, the bird will go away. He did that once. But hey, it’s hella cold at 5 a.m.

Someone of my esteemed companions here at the Board must know the name of this devil in feathers. So tell me–

What is it called?
What does it fear, alone in the dark at night? What is its deepest, irrational terror, that brings it to its knees shaking and sweating? I must know!

What will make the damned thing go away?

2

CHIHthulu?

3

I don’t think a falcon would help much,unless it’s a big bully. That has to be some kind of a raptor you have already.
(A+++ mini rant tho)

4

Sounds like a swift or perhaps a starling. Red wing blackbirds also have a dozen equally obnoxious calls.

5

I don’t think there’s such a thing as “a” starling. There’s a 50-starling minimum. They creak and mutter and rumble and squeak and thrum, and a flock of them sounds like a shipyard in operation.

Cardinals are known to CHIH, as are the red-winged blackbirds **Laggard **mentioned. It could also be a CHIH-kadee. From your description though, I’m thinking it might be a swallow. We have barn swallows here that swoop around in circles, CHIHing all the way. They don’t bother us; they get drowned out by the red-bellied woodpeckers.

6

I don’t know but I feel your pain. We have a neighbor a couple of doors down that has a rooster. And it’s a stupid rooster too. It calls as the sun comes up about 5:30AM and then again around 8:00AM and then sometimes in the evening around 7:00PM as the sun is setting.

According to the documentaries I’ve seen (cartoons) roosters are only supposed to call as the sun comes up.

7

Have no idea about what bird it is, but how about one of these or something similar to get rid of it. The real cat worked, right

http://www.wildlifetreasures.com/syntheticcats.htm

8

It could be a merlin (Wikipedia), a small falcon. They’re common around here and their screaming call can get on your nerves after a while. Multiply that by three or four when there’s a family nesting in the neighbourhood and they are downright irritating. A friend had a family of five around his cabin at the lake one summer when we were visiting. I’d say that we were driven to shooting three of them with a .22 to get rid of them (that’s how irritating they were), but it’s illegal so I won’t say it.

Two more reasons to hate merlins: 1) they go after songbirds and deplete the local population; I saw one pluck a kingbird off a branch, and 2) they eat dragonflies, which help control mosquitoes.

So no, I don’t like merlins, and if that’s what you’ve got, I feel your pain.

9

5 AM? Lucky you.

From your description, I think we have the same kind of bird in my apartment building courtyard, but ours starts up as early as 3 AM.

This is a city, mind you. Ornithologists have documented that city birds get up earlier than country birds, and sing louder. They have to beat the traffic noise, you see. That’s why the earliest sign of spring here is the robins caroling away at 4 AM. Cheery bastards.

If it’s legal in your area, consider hunting Birdy with a shotgun. Otherwise, get a white noise machine; it works pretty well for me. So do earplugs.

10

I will trade you for my flock of lorikeets. Gah. They bully the neighbour’s cat, so that’s no help. They bully my 33kg and 28kg dogs, too. Or the cockatoos.

I used to love parrots.

As to making it stop? I have a different bird that is my 5am bird in spring. I think it’s looking for a mate (Askance gave it a name, which I have promptly forgotten.) I have threatened to sex it up myself, beastiality be damned, if it would just. shut. up.

11

I hear a fowl chorus around 345am, myself. To drown them out, I put a box fan in the window closest to my head. On high, it tunes out everything else, but I can sleep through it quite well because it’s white noise (it’s better than birds, anyway). I mean, it sucks when I forget to turn the fan on and the birds wake me up (or when it’s cold outside and I have to turn it down), but that’s the best solution I’ve found that doesn’t involve earplugs. I can’t wear earplugs for a number of reasons… I’m a huge wax overproducer and they give me severe discomfort no matter what size or shape. Plus, I just can’t sleep in utter silence. *Especially *not trapped in my own head.

I don’t know if a box fan in the window would work against your bird’s shriek, but it’s worth a shot.

12

We had a flicker that drove us insane for years every spring, so I too feel your pain. We never solved the problem. As far as I know, it is still there driving the new owners crazy too.

13

I would love to hear a chuck-will’s-widow again (a nightjar, a nocturnal singing bird); 20 years ago they were definitely numerous in this county (Duval in NE Florida), but, unbelievably, there hasn’t been a single record of one in the county this year. :frowning: I actually was part of a survey looking for them-didn’t hear a single one on a 15 mile route involving 10 stops.

14

I have bird nostalgia for nighthawks. We used to hear them all the time in the city when I was growing up, sometimes calling but most of the time that rushing-booming sound they made when they dove down after insects. I haven’t heard one in decades now, in the city or the country.

15

Wow, wikipedia has audio birdcall samples on some birds’ entry pages! That is so cool.

So far, I have listened to a red-winged blackbird, a flicker, a barn swallow, a chickadee, a merlin, a swift, and a cardinal.

The cardinal’s call especially was just beautiful. (actually, I had to get the cardinal on YouTube, here.) I would even say profoundly so.

All the other birds so far have been mostly okay. In varying degrees of inspiration and, yannow, bird musicianship; but none of them set my teeth on edge, or seemed likely to call up eldritch avian horrors.

I cannot overemphasize how much this bird sings only ONE NOTE EVER. That’s the thing — it’s like the audio version of Chinese Water Torture. Even the insidious Dopplering does not change this ONE NOTE sufficiently to actually shift it to another pitch. Arggh.

Incidentally, I am in the San Francisco Bay Area. That probably has a bearing on this. I don’t think we have cardinals around here, alas. NOW I wish we did!

Colibri? Umm, if you get a minute?

16

I recorded the 5am bird with my flipcam and uploaded it to YouTube here.

You may need to turn up the volume a bit.

I don’t know why I care exactly, but I just really want to know what kind of freaking bird this is.

17

Edited title at the request of the OP.

18

English sparrow? They’re pretty good at monotonous chirping. Being small, they’re even better at staying out of sight while monotonously chirping.

19

Violet-green swallow?

20

Gah! I had a dream with a chihCHIHchihing bird circling outside my window.

Maybe I spend too much time on the Dope.