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.

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.

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)

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.

Snowy Fields, originally uploaded by pterodaktyl.

The cold weather covering the whole of the UK (see here for a great view from space) has made itself felt even here on the usually mild south coast. This is the view looking west from the edge of Dawlish.

1000s of Redwing (Turdus iliacus) and Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) have descended on the area after being displaced by harsher weather further east. I need to brave the cold and try and get a recording of a feeding flock!

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.