In woodlands of western North America, the sound of August is the "oo-wee-oo" of
young Black-headed Grosbeaks asking their parents for food. This is an incongruous
"begging" call. Most young birds repeat brief sounds at a rapid rate, as though to
convey a since of urgency. This call does not sound urgent, although it does
sound eerie. Enjoy it if you can.
One additional note. In the second segment, a begging call is followed by a bit of song,
twice. I have never noticed this before. It's an interesting little twist.
Also, listen for the Western Gray Squirrel, whose sounds are very low on the sonogram.
SOURCES
In writing the commentary for these posts I have made extensive use of the invaluable
bioacoustic resources listed below. For phylogenetic information, I often start with a web
search of "Phylogeny of x," where x is an avian genus, family, or order. That is a hit-or-miss
proposition. A recently-released
resource that makes phylogenetic queries more systematic is the
Birds of the World
website from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If you follow the link and type the name of an
avian family into the search box, you will be able to visit a home page for that family that presents
the number of genera and species, and an illustration for each genus.
If you subscribe, you will get more information.
Also available to subscribers is the Birds of the World species accounts.
Rolled out in 2020, this is currently an amalgam of the Birds of North America series, that was initiated by
the American Ornithologists' Union around 1990, a recently-initiated online equivalent for Neotropical Birds,
and the Handbook of Birds of the World series that was produced
by Lynx Edicions, also beginning in the 90s. BNA has been hosted by the Lab of O for some time, and they recently
added HBW to their portfolio. Especially useful for my purposes is the Systematics History subsection of the BNA accounts.
EBird still has its separate species pages for all the birds of the world. These feature photos, recordings, range maps, and
numerical eBird statistics, but little text. Overall, the abundance and availability of resources is astounding. Never has so
much been available to so many for so little.