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.

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.

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.

Long-winged Conehead(Conocephalus discolor)

I’ve been hearing these crickets calling since August, but it was only the other day that I managed to get a look at one and actually identify the species.

I can hear the call very clearly, even over background noise like traffic, but all the people I’ve pointed it out to have had to listen for several minutes before they “tune in” to the sound. I’d be interested to hear how easily people can pick it out when they listen to the recording…

Long-winged Conehead

Recorded at Dawlish Warren NNR with an Olympus LS-10, using the built-in microphones with Rycote Mini Windjammers.

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.

They’re very hard to track down as there are so many singing at once that it’s almost impossible to zero in on one individual. When you do get up close to one the volume of the call is incredible.

Recorded with the built-in microphones on an Olympus LS-10. No post-processing needed, the crickets were loud enough to down out almost all the background noise!

Great Green Bush-crickets

Posted from London, England, United Kingdom.

Last night was damp and foggy, and a ship anchored off the coast was sounding its horn – the first time I’ve ever heard this from the house.

Recorded with a Sennheiser K6/ME66 microphone and an Olympus LS-10 recorder. Filtered in Cubase LE to remove noise and boost low frequencies.

Foghorn