Rufous Hummingbird
Selasphorus rufus
Gyllenhaal residence, Oak Park
Cook County, IL
23 November 2011
These audio recordings were made at around 7:30am on 23 Nov 2011 in the Gyllenhaal's backyard. The audio captured 11 call notes of hummingbird at the time understood to be Selasphorus sp. but which later was identified based on DNA evidence as a Rufous Hummingbird. These audio recordings also provide convincing evidence of the specific identity.
The first file (6 MB) is approximately one minute in length and includes all the captured calls. The individual calls were also extracted as separate files and are included here. All the files are PCM wav format, 44,100 Hz sampling rate (mono).
Full recording with all calls.
Call #1
Call #2
Call #3
Call #4
Call #5
Call #6
Call #7
Call #8
Call #9
Call #10
Call #11
Here are some composites. The first one uses calls of Rufous and Broad-tailed calls from the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs Western Region, and places two Rufous calls ahead of two Gyllenhaal calls with five Broad-tailed calls following. The second one uses three Broad-tailed calls pulled from Xeno-Canto (recorded by Nathan Pipelow) followed by the two Gyllenhaal calls, with five Rufous calls from Xeno-Canto (recorded by Daniel Lane).
Rufous-Gyllenhaal-Broad-tailed.
Broad-tailed-Gyllenhaal-Rufous
You can listen to the audio files and try to assess similarities, but it is easier to look at them using spectrograms. Here are the spectrograms for the two comparison clips. Note that the time scales are different for the two spectrograms.
This is the spectrogram showing two Rufous chips (left band), two "Gyllenhaal" chips (middle band), and five Broad-tailed chips (right band).
This is the spectrogram showing three Broad-tailed chips (left band), two "Gyllenhaal" chips (middle band), and five Rufous chips (right band).
Clearly there is a stronger simlarity between the Gyllenhaal bird's chips and Rufous Hummingbird chips.