Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus phoenicurus Courelinhas, Coruche, Portugal, 10:22, 11 May 2021 (Magnus Robb). Vist and plit calls of an adult male. Background: Woodlark Lullula arborea and Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs. 210511.MR.102234.11

Now that I know where my nearest territories are this year, it will be interesting to explore more of Common Redstart's vocabulary as this season unfolds. Besides understanding better how they use their vist call, I’d like to learn more of the obscure calls in their repertoire, as one of them could be particularly useful. At the time of writing, no nocturnal flight call for Common or Ehrenberg’s Redstart has been identified. Given that Black Redstart P ochruros has one, these close relatives surely have them too. Perhaps they are similar enough to the highly variable European Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca or some other species migrating at the same season that we have been screening them out. I for one am making a serious effort to unscreen them. Now if you'll just let me get back to my nocmig, Mark. Over to you...

Thanks Magnus. It’s difficult to see from Martinez & Martin’s paper how they dealt with the extensive repertoire of Common Redstart, and the variations according to behaviour and context. One of my favourite books, Birds in a Cage by Derek Niemann (2013) tells of several British ornithologists who spent most of World War 2 together as prisoners of war. They spent several years at Eichstätt, Bavaria, an old German barracks set in a very rich area for breeding birds. Among them was John Buxton, who studied breeding of Common Redstart at the camp from 1941 to 1944. His observations during the war formed the core of a New Naturalist title published almost a decade later, The Redstart (Buxton 1950). Buxton mentioned many different calls given during the breeding season, and his detailed observations on some of them are also described in a BB paper (Buxton 1945).

Is the lack of information on other calls in Martinez & Martin’s paper important? Maybe. Why? Let me explain. I have written many times about the debt I owe to Peter Grant who set the standards that we in The Sound Approach try to live up to. Well, sometimes he could make a mistake…

Mo and I were birding with him in Christchurch up the road in Dorset, England one August, light years ago, when he pointed out in a leafy tree the calls of a Siberian Chiffchaff P tristis, a flat short call known as the lost chick call. Now that’s a bit odd, as tristis typically arrive from October onwards.

Twenty years later, Killian recorded a family of Common Chiffchaffs P collybita in his garden and we realised that during their first weeks, young nominate chiffchaffs give the lost chick call before moving on to their better known sounds. Call development in many species was well documented by Thorpe, one of the fathers of bioacoustics (eg, 1961). So, Peter had heard a very young Common Chiffchaff. He couldn’t see the bird. Too leafy in August.

Back before the start of The Sound Approach I was recording Wood Warblers P sibilatrix and unwittingly had been standing by their nest. The nest alarm calls of male and female had a different length and inflection from each other, and I later confirmed this in BWP (Cramp 1992).

From these experiences a basic principle of The Sound Approach was formed that no bird has one song or one call. BWP lists fourteen vocalisations for Common Redstart and as we pointed out we don’t know its night migration sounds. I would suggest that the full redstart repertoire, taking into account both sexes and including young birds, will have nearer twenty different sounds.

Does this matter? No, I suspect that Martinez and Martin’s results are valid. However, it creates a landscape where nuance is dead and industrial techniques like this give the false impression that birds have one call and one song, and that is complete sound blindness. Back to you, Magnus.

Before moving on to Black Redstart, let's remember that Common Redstart actually breeds in Africa, in the Maghreb. We have only one individual's song to show, but what a strange song! It is similar in structure to the ones we have already considered, but the 'fanfares' at the start of each strophe sometimes constitute the entire song, eg, four out of the five strophes from 1:36 to 2:00. Most of the fanfares in this song, recognisable as such because the first note is longer and closer to a 'whistle', I suspect are in fact composed of Fulvous Babbler Argya fulva mimicry. However, as redstart’s mimicry is normally razor sharp, this doesn’t quite make the grade. All other strophes start with Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis mimicry, and in timbre this actually comes close to the gruff openings that are a special characteristic of Ehrenberg's Redstart P p samamisicus. Common Redstarts from the Atlas Mountains are undoubtedly worthy of further investigation.