Hello,
New to this. I live in SW France. I was walking in the woods this morning and heard a very odd bird call. I consider myself keen, but not expert by any chance, on the more usual sounds I hear. I did not manage to record it, frustratingly. I had never heard this one before.
The Call was a quite long single haunting note. Repeated after a few seconds. Medium pitch. My dog was equally spooked by it. I saw “something” fly off in the canopy above me, at which point the call became (I assume) an alarm in flight. A sort of warbling tone repeated as it was flying. Movement stopped and the long tone reappeared. What I saw (sorry, no colours other than possibly brownish to report) was medium sized, sort of crow size, but that is a guess. I do not think it was an owl, but am happy to be corrected. Certainly not a Hoopoe, which I know well - we have many around us. Neither was it a Golden Oriole - again, very familiar because they breed in the woods behind my house.
We do get migrants passing by en route to Africa. I suspect this might be a migrant.
Not much to go on, but any steers would be appreciated.
best regards to all..
If you have a lot of time on your hands you could always plough through the 'usual suspects' on this site
https://xeno-canto.org/species/Garrulus-glandarius?pg=1
It's only on Jay as that is my usual go to for woodland birds making weird sounds - they don't just screech
Cin J
Thanks, I’ll have a look.
I looked and it is not a Jay, at least. The single melodic haunting note is longer and held for at least a couple of seconds. Was very creepy!