Vocal Differences In the July 2010 AOU Splits

Eastern & Mexican Whip-poor-will: What To Listen For

1. Mexican Whip-poor-will More Burry-a tonal quality characterized by rapid beats (10-125Hz); derived from the word “burr” originally used to describe the sound of the letter “r” in the Scottish dialect of English; appears as a more squiggly trace on spectrograms.

2. Eastern Whip-poor-will Delivered Faster (less time between songs)-caution this can depend on mood of bird so be certain bird is in full regular rhythm song; in the sound examples each song and the time in between for the Mexican Whip-poor-will is about 1.29 seconds; for the Eastern it is 1.08 seconds. Each clip is 12 seconds in length during which the Eastern Whip-poor-will delivers 12 songs and the Mexican Whip-poor-will only 10 songs.