After learning how to set up the program on the Song Meter SM3, I started recording for 2 hours on the night of April 9th. The recordings stopped and re-started every half hour until around 2:30 am. I placed it on the top floor balcony of my 6th floor apartment here in Charlottesville. The recordings I collected sadly didn’t render any sounds from birds, but there was a lot of other nightlife recorded.

Considering that my apartment is in a pretty urban area in Charlottesville, sounds that the SM3 picked up from people and cars most likely drowned out any potential bird night calls I might have heard from nocturnal birds during the time I was recording. This made me realize how easily we overlook bird night calls in more urban areas. I also learned the hard way that birds are most active at around dusk and dawn, so recording closer to those times would have been ideal.

Although I didn’t get to hear any myself, I did some research to find out about what birds are migrating through Charlottesville right now. Looking at observations from different parks around the Rivanna trails right around central Charlottesville, I found that the Louisiana Waterthrush, Hooded Warbler, Redstart, Orchard and Baltimore Orioles, White-eyed Vireo, and Yellow-breasted Chat are the most common birds seen in parks around my area in the spring.

Here is a map of the parks around Charlottesville where these birdes frequent in the Spring:

The parks I paid most attention to because they are closest to where I was recording are McIntire and Riverview Parks.

Post by Niki Goncalves, Second-Year