These special larks are incredible! Their names come from the loud rattling sound that the males make during their displays. They produce this sound not with their mouths, but with their wings. Flappets rattle while flying very high up. The two clappers usually flutter up and float back down. They often start displaying while it is still dark.
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Did you know that we can “see” sounds? Birders call the image above a sonogram (or spectrograph). It shows the pitch (frequency) of the sound over time. Sonograms can be difficult to understand when you describe them in words, but play the sound…can you see how they work now? They are a really useful tool to understand bird sounds better. If you want to see sonograms for all the birds, check out my FIREFINCH app.
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What do you think the main difference is between the Cape Clapper and Eastern Clapper? Well, in Cape Clapper the wing-clapping sounds speed up. They start slower, but then go up to 28x/second! That’s incredible – how many times can you clap your hands in a second? You’ll see that there are a bunch of lines above the rising whistle. These are called harmonics. Humans are not able to hear the higher ones.
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While the two clappers usually fly up, clap, and then float down, the Flappet Lark is a bit different. He stays in the sky for a long period and keeps clapping every few seconds. Also, Flappets don’t add the long whistles after their clapping. Their wing-clapping is very fast – it sounds a bit like a cat purring. It’s not a very loud sound, but once you know what to listen for, you’ll hear it rocky bushveld habitats. So cool!