Takahe

In November last year Li-Li and I travelled to New Zealand for a month. We rented a small camper van, and explored as much of the country as we could in the limited time available – from the windswept dunes of Stewart Island in the far South to the huge Kauri trees of the Waipoua Forest in Northland. New Zealand is a beautiful country, and although the plight of much of the native wildlife (under attack by introduced species such as rats, stoats and possums) is severe, it’s still possible to see many of the surviving species in the wild without going too far off the beaten track.

As the holiday was primarily a sightseeing trip, and mindful of the restrictions of airline baggage, I wanted a lightweight recording setup which would still allow me to capture some of the unique sounds of this once-in-a-lifetime journey at a decent quality. A couple of months before we left I upgraded my Olympus LS-10 to a Sony PCM-D50, which I paired with my trusty MiniPIP microphones, mounted in a compact boundary array. This gave me the option of travelling light and just using the built-in mics on the PCM-D50, or taking along the array if I was more serious about recording.

The day after we arrived at Christchurch airport we picked up our camper van and, after stocking up on some food supplies, headed to the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in the northern suburbs of Christchurch. Although we planned to see as many of the native bird species in the wild as possible, Willowbank has several of the most famous ones in captivity and we though it would be a good insurance policy to catch up with them there.

Among the species present at Willowbank are a pair of Takahe. A giant flightless relative of the Moorhen, these birds were believed to be extinct until 1948, when a small population was found in the remote mountain valleys to the west of Lake Te Anau in Fiordland. There are now around 250 birds, split between the Fiordland population; some of the predator free offshore islands and a number of breeding centres. The pair at Willowbank are older birds which have been retired from the breeding program at Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre (although at the time we were there the staff at Willowbank had noticed they were displaying signs of nesting behaviour) and live in a large enclosure with a pond and plenty of long grass to provide cover. When we came to the enclosure one of the birds was sitting next to the fence and preening, while occasionally producing a deep “doop” call which carried quite a distance. The small microphones on the PCM-D50 weren’t ideal for catching the low-frequency resonance of the call, but it’s still an impressive sound.

 

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

When I left home at 05:30 a full moon was high in the sky and the birds in the coastal town where we live were already in full voice. During the drive to the reservoir a thick band of cloud covered the sky, and when I got there I was greeted by total silence except for the dripping of trees still wet from the previous night’s downpour. It was another half-hour or so before the clouds broke, allowing the dawn light to filter through and the birds to start singing.

The microphones (2 x AT4022 in a partially baffled boundary array) were located right on the shoreline at a narrow point in the reservoir, facing across the water towards a hillside covered with conifers and birch trees. Listen out for the twittering calls of a flock of Crossbills as they fly across the lake, and the occasional distant wing-claps of displaying Woodpigeons.

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

The freeze finally broke on the night of December 27th, and by the morning the snow was almost gone, and so were the Redwings aside from a few brief visits. Hopefully the food we gave them helped increase their survival chances during the cold spell, and we had the privilege of spending a few days observing these Scandinavian visitors – a great Christmas present!

Posted from Dawlish, England, United Kingdom.

For the third year running the polar jet stream has meandered southwards and brought snow and freezing weather to the whole of the UK. This has led to large numbers of winter migrants being pushed into Devon and Cornwall as they move south-west in search of warmer weather. Almost every tree around our house has several Redwings perched in the branches, and our garden bird list has a new addition, with two Meadow Pipits dropping in to forage for insects and snack on the bird food we put out.

A rather larger group of Meadow Pipits is the subject of this recording, made on the morning of the winter solstice in a field just outside Dawlish. You can also hear the flight calls or Redwing and Fieldfare, the distant drumming of a Great-spotted Woodpecker, and the croak of a Raven.

Recorded with 2 x AT4022 microphones in a partially baffled boundary array and a Tascam HD-P2 recorder.

Posted from Dawlish, England, United Kingdom.

The fungi fruiting season is at its peak here, and the damp weather over the last few days seems to have brought them out en masse. In places it was almost surreal, with several different species growing right next to each other as if some over-enthusiastic set dressers had been preparing the area for a fantasy film.

They weren’t just typical toadstools either – some were pretty much the size and texture of a human brain:

Cauliflower Fungus (Sparissis crispa)

There were also quite a few Puff-balls, some of which had exploded, leaving a greyish stain of spores on the surrounding ground:

Puff-ball

I’ve only seen Fly Agaric a handful of times in my life, but I lost count of them this morning. I was travelling fairly light as I had a lot of ground to cover (I clocked up 13 miles during the course of the morning) so I didn’t have a tripod or remote flash. The combination of the fog and the dense canopy of the conifer plantations meant that I had to use the built in flash on my camera, so apologies for the poor lighting in some of these shots.

Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria)

I’ve been able to identify most of the species I photographed (which is only a tiny fraction of the ones I saw) but this one is a mystery – to me it looks more like some kind of sea anemone!

Mystery fungus

In one part of the forest I walked along a track between very densely planted young conifers. These formed such an effective windbreak that although a strong breeze was blowing elsewhere the air there was almost still. Everything was dripping with water from the fog and these must have been ideal conditions because there were more different species here than anywhere else. The older fruits were themselves coated in thick layers of cobweb-like mould.

Mould on fungus

This one I really have no idea about – I can’t decide whether the yellow colour comes from the fungus itself or a mould growing on it, but it was pretty eye-catching!

Another mystery species

There was lots of Yellow Stagshorn in the area as well, ranging from single tiny fruits to huge colonies:

Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa)

Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa)

And finally a beautiful young Fly Agaric just pushing out of the grass:

Young Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria)

Dawn at Trenchford Reservoir

After struggling with the traffic noise around Haldon Forest for several months, I’ve been trying to find a quieter location for recording. For a few weeks I’ve been eyeing up a group of three reservoirs, surrounded by pine plantations a few miles west of Haldon. This morning I headed out before dawn to scout out the area.

The reservoirs are located on top of a ridge on the eastern side of Dartmoor National Park, although they’re separated from the rest of the moor by a deep river valley. Each lake is roughly 1km in length, and each one has a marshy area at the head end, which presumably floods in winter. The area is managed for fishing and walking, so there’s a good network of trails around each lake and through the plantations.

I’m pretty sure this is the quietest place I’ve ever found in south-west England. Of course there’s the inevitable airliners passing overhead every so often, but that aside there’s hardly any audible man-made noise. Normally by 7am there’s too much noise to make recording worthwhile, but at 9am this morning it was still wonderfully peaceful, although the frequency of the aircraft passes was increasing.

The landscape is totally man-made – the lakes are held in place with large earth dams, and the conifer forest is all timber plantation – but with the sun rising through the trees, mist drifting across the water and ravens calling overhead it feels much more like one of the wilder parts of Scandinavia or the Western USA than it does Devon!

This recording is a compilation of three clips – a Tawny Owl calling across the water, a Grey Squirrel scolding from a tree and a few minutes of ambience at the head of one of the lakes. It was recorded with my Olympus LS-10 and MiniPIP microphones. I’ll definitely be going back with the heavy gear to get some more recordings when I get the chance!

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

It would be hard to claim that professional cycle racing shares the low-carbon credentials normally associated with two wheels and pedal power – between the police escorts, camera bikes, TV helicopter and support vehicles, I’d say there were more more motorised vehicles travelling with the race than there were riders. It’s certainly an impressive convoy – part sporting event and part carnival procession!

In this recording I’ve removed around 15 minutes between the breakaway group leading the race and the peloton (main pack of riders). It was recorded with my MiniPIP microphones in a Rycote basket and an Olympus LS-10.

Posted from Dawlish, England, United Kingdom.

Forest trail at dawn

As summer ends and the autumnal equinox approaches, the monthly recording sessions in Haldon Forest are becoming more challenging. For the last few months there’s been a golden hour between 4am and 5am, with enough light for the wildlife to be active and very little traffic on the roads. Now darkness lasts until 6am, by which time plenty of people are up and about, and the lay-by I’ve been using previously has cars going past every few minutes.

With this in mind I thought I’d try something different for the September recording. Rather than relaxing in a car seat and listening to my AT4022 boundary array remotely, I thought I’d head out into the forest on foot and see what I could find. To keep the weight down I took my LS-10 recorder and a pair of MiniPIP microphones in a Rycote windshield.

At 5am it was still pitch dark as I parked the car at the head of one of the trails leading into the plantations. I always find the first few minutes of walking out into woodland at night quite intimidating – even though intellectually I know there’s unlikely to be any dangerous creatures roaming around, the inky blackness under the trees affects the more primitive parts of the brain that don’t always listen to reason. Within a few minutes the apprehension wears off and your senses begin to tune into all the subtle signs of life going on all around.

There are Fallow Deer everywhere in the forest, and at regular intervals my headtorch beam would pick out their reflective eyes watching me from either side of the trail. After a while I began to realise that I could smell the deer, often before I saw them – possibly as the rutting season approaches the males develop a more pungent odour? It’s an interesting reversal of the classic stalking concept of remaining downwind from the deer so they don’t smell you!

As far as sound recordings went it was a pretty unrewarding morning. Even in the heart of the forest you can’t get more than 2km from a road, and in the still air the sound of a vehicle can easily carry that far. Mix that in with the occasional airliner passing overhead and you get pretty much continuous disturbance. Also we’re in a slack period where most of the breeding and summer migrant birds have departed, but the wintering species like Redwing and Fieldfare haven’t arrived yet, meaning there’s very little bird activity.

I’ve put together a compilation of the best recordings I got, featuring:

• Crickets calling from the rough grass in a felled area
• The crackle and hum of the high-voltage power line which runs north-south through the forest. I debated whether to include this since it’s certainly  not a natural sound, but the power line has a significant effect on the ecology of the forest (the easement is managed as a butterfly habitat for species including Pearl-bordered Fritillary) so I left it in.
• The brook which drains most of the southern side of the forest as it passes through a culvert under the trail
• Tawny Owls (and a single Common Toad) calling around the pond in Kiddens Plantation.

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

We caught up with the birds feeding on an area of wet pasture just behind the local cricket pitch. Initially we watched them from a discreet distance, but after seeing how indifferent the birds were to other people wandering around the area we moved a little closer. The flock then began moving directly towards us whilst feeding, until eventually they were less than 20 meters away. Getting that close to any wading bird is an unusual privilege, never mind something as exotic as these! A barbed wire fence and some Dock plants severely cut down the photo opportunities, but I managed to get a photo of one of the birds coming in to land, and Lil got a good shot of one on the ground.

I took along some sound recording gear, but the ibises were incredibly quiet, even when an occasional scuffle broke out amongst the flock. I didn’t think I’d recorded any calls at all, but after getting home and listening carefully I discovered what I’m pretty sure is a single faint call:

Certainly not the best recording I’ve ever made, but it was brilliant just to spend a couple of hours watching the birds up close.

While the recorder was running I also picked up a Cetti’s Warbler. First recorded as breeding in the UK in 1973, in the last 10 years or so there’s been a population explosion of these birds in south-west England and you can now find them almost anywhere where there’s a decent amount of marshland and scrubby bushes. From a sound recording point of view they’re very challenging, as their usual behaviour is to skulk in a bush for several minutes, call once, and then fly off to another bush, meaning the recordist is always one step behind!

Posted from Budleigh Salterton, England, United Kingdom.