I recorded this sound (with my iPhone, please excuse the poor quality) on 29 April 2012 near my house in Concord, MA. Have a listen and see what you think. For a little additional background information, which will also give you a hint, read the footnote below. ((This is a fairly common variant of the song of a common bird here in Massachusetts. I suspect that local birders, at least, will identify it easily, but I think it is specific to this area so I’m curious to know if it sounds familiar to birders from other regions.))
Click this link to listen to the sound:
MysterySound_ConcordMA_Apr2012_crop
And when you’re ready to know the answer click here.
I heard a Tufted Titmouse singing a very similar, what I though of as a whirring song, in Hartford, Vt a few months ago! The person with me who know birds better than I do thought it must be a second Carolina Wren until she actually saw the Titmouse singing the song. I think I still have the recording on my iPhone too!
I was recently serenaded by dozens of tufted titmice …. they came within a foot of me and sang
I’m in Northern California and have a recording I took from my backyard that I posted to my Facebook group, Birding By Ear California! As a mystery. When putting it through eBird’s bird net, it came back strong for a Tuffted Titmouse but we don’t have those here in Petaluma and so the mystery continued… finally someone suggested Oak Titmouse and I found it hard to believe. I know the Oak titmouse’s by my house and they didn’t sound like this. But then this Fall, I heard the call again as if flung straight out of the beak of an Oak Titmouse I watched as it perched on the fence in front of me. This is the exact call… it’s just clearer.
Over a decade has passed since you posted this article, but I was so glad to find it today. I just shared it on my FB page along with this comment:
For nearly two months now, I’ve been hearing an unfamiliar birdsong – a bright, sharp, repeated trilling sound – while walking in Cole’s Woods [Glens Falls,
New York]. I shared a recording of it here a while back…
[ https://www.facebook.com/danalstimpson/posts/pfbid02n6Vrz6Vvg7CxxFw2QRvgxaZzTDEWLW9T6YB8wQNjJ5m2L9RZ4WmAJH9qKiC7Yi9Nl ]
…and, after entertaining a number of suggestions as to what it might be, I ended up agreeing with [a friend] that it was most likely a Tufted Titmouse. But that was a “most likely” kind of ID. I was still feeling uncertain.
Then I heard it over there again this past Friday, singing along with some Pine Warblers and Brown Creepers. Listening to my recording this morning, I decided to google:
does a tufted titmouse make a trilling sound
That search brought up this article. Woohoo! The fourth recording in this piece is an exact match for my bird!
As Inspector Clouseau would say, “The case is solv-ed!”