Screech in the night, who was this?

[smeerkat]

My girlfriend really wants to believe this was a male (great spotted?) kiwi. I'm doubtful, but I can't prove her wrong so far.

What did we hear here near the salmon farm of the Tākaka area?

Note: I did some noise suppression and amplification on the audio but it's still pretty soft. The calls were very regular with a ~12 second interval, but I cut some silence out for easy listening. You should be able to hear 3 calls, the third being the loudest

https://observation.org/observation/381192447/

[Oscar Thomas]

Hi there, not a kiwi but perhaps a spur-winged plover? Hard to tell as I assume it was quite distant, but they do often call at night: https://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz/specie ... ged-plover

[smeerkat]

Hmm, I don't hear it in the example calls on that page, nor in Merlin. Thanks for the suggestion

[Nick Allen]

I filtered out the low and high tones to pretty much leave just the main sound which is at about 3 kHz. The sound is a bit too high in pitch and the repeats too far apart for GS Kiwi. I thought it could be Long-tailed Cuckoo, but the calls of that species increase in tone along each weeesht from about 3 to 5 kHz and the sound on the recording is pretty flat - there is usually a harmonic on the spectrogram of the cuckoo 'song' too, above the fundamental. There seems to be a strange lower 'harmonic' below the main note on the recording.

Is the sound made by a bird? Might not be made by a male if it is. Could it be some sound from the nearby fish farm, or some other anthrophone?

[Jim Kirker]

It reminds me of wind noise in a marina. I'm guessing not a bird.

[smeerkat]

I filtered out the low and high tones to pretty much leave just the main sound which is at about 3 kHz. The sound is a bit too high in pitch and the repeats too far apart for GS Kiwi. I thought it could be Long-tailed Cuckoo, but the calls of that species increase in tone along each weeesht from about 3 to 5 kHz and the sound on the recording is pretty flat - there is usually a harmonic on the spectrogram of the cuckoo 'song' too, above the fundamental. There seems to be a strange lower 'harmonic' below the main note on the recording.

Is the sound made by a bird? Might not be made by a male if it is. Could it be some sound from the nearby fish farm, or some other anthrophone?

Thanks for looking into it so thoroughly! The sound came from the opposite side of the salmon farm, but I do agree it could be something non-bird after all. I guess we'll just never know, but glad to know you guys agree we didn't miss out on a kiwi spotting

Currently tramping along lake Rotoiti for another chance

[bombaydave2]

Barn owl.

[sm1979]

I think a barn owl would be less likely than a Great Spotted Kiwi in that area. There are GSK in the ranges behind Takaka, Cobb Valley, and one was caught on camera at Farewell Spit area in recent times.