Amazing phenomenon... and amazing work you're doing, Bill!!

I would love to be there, smelling thehay in the fall and listening to birdsong. So beautiful ♥

I too had amazing flight in Ithaca 6 miles north of you the same night. So I wonder if there had been array of microphone in a line may we could have seen a waves of birds passing through!

Masterful recording, a night of legend! Mesmerizing beauty. Thank you so much, Bill, for this contribution and for all of your foundational input in the field. My experience as a newby has been to keep OldBird open on my computer and phone all the time. Dangerous inverse rabbit hole. Thank you again.

Sounds like there are coyotes singing, too!

Was just telling my students about the bird migration patterns... I will play this for them! Thanks!

I listen to this recording more times than I'd like to admit. I find it so comforting for some reason.

A recording from central New York State (North America)of thousands of night migrating birds on the night of September 11-12, 2020. The most common calls are from 12+ species of wood warblers, Rose-breasted Grosbeak & Swainson's Thrush -  most all headed to Caribbean Islands, southern Mexico or Central & South America for the winter. The 6+ hour recording began at 9:45pm EDT. To hear the intricacies, crank the volume. WARNING FOR HEADPHONE LISTENERS: There are a few instances of very loud bird calls (ex. flock of Green Herons passing over at 0:01:45 - one minute 45 seconds into recording. Adjust your headphone listening level on this section before proceeding).

I made this recording using an "Old Bird 21c" microphone mounted on a 2.5 meter wood tower in the middle of a hay field. It contains the densest dark terrain (no artificial light), non-coastal, avian nocturnal flight call rate I have documented in 30+ years of monitoring such calls in North America. The original audio submitted to SoundCloud was a mono wav file, 22050 sampling rate, 16 bit resolution.

The artwork is by Cheryl Chalmers (c) 2011, and depicts her kids listening to night migrating birds through a roof-mounted "flowerpot"  microphone in Trumansburg, NY.

Special thanks to Cathy & Frank Darrow for hosting the recording station in their Danby, NY hayfield, and to Herb Susmann of Nature Sound Electronics for superb S/N in the microphone electronics.

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