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.

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.

Dawn in the forest

After a couple of weeks when the dawn has been too wet or windy for recording, I finally made it up to Haldon Forest for the August recording of my year-long project.

Unfortunately the wind was carrying the sound of the A38 main road across the forest to where I was recording, and even after filtering there is still some traffic noise audible. For this reason I’ve made this month’s track a condensed version with only the most interesting bits of action.

After remaining quiet all summer, the Fallow Deer are becoming more vocal as they approach the rutting season. A group of seven deer crossed the road only metres from the car as I was recording, including the first antlered stag I’ve seen this year.

Also heard in this recording are a couple of summer migrants, now close to the end of their stay but still making their voices heard. First of all a Nightjar, which actually swooped overhead, silhouetted against the dawn sky, before it called. Towards the end of the recording a Chiffchaff also breaks into song.

Partially baffled boundary array

This recording was the first field test of a new type of stereo array for my AT4022 microphones. Drawing on the design of Crown’s “SASS” microphones and also the research of several members of the NatureRecordists Yahoo group, this features two angled wooden boundary plates with an acoustic  foam baffle between them. My initial feeling is that it significantly improves the width and localisation of the stereo field – comments and opinions are very welcome!

Even when things don’t go quite to plan with the recording it’s still wonderful to be out in the forest so early in the morning – driving back I caught a glimpse of fog around Exeter, so I made a detour to a point where I could look down onto the city rising out of the morning mist.

Exeter surrounded by fog

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

Haldon Forest

I’m currently working on a project to record dawn at the same location in Haldon Forest every month for a year. This is going to become increasingly challenging as the days shorten and the sunrise moves closer to the time when people start getting up and heading to work in their cars – on the other hand I’ll be spared the pain of getting up at 03:30!

It’s now late July, and the dawn chorus is virtually non-existent. With breeding over most of the birds are busy feeding on the abundance of insects and seeds around the forest and are quiet except for occasional contact calls. In the distance a Nightjar calls over the scrubland, and then falls silent as the light grows. Tawny Owls and a Kestrel can also be heard, before a group of Ravens arrive in the area. Towards the end of the piece a Great-spotted Woodpecker flies in and begins feeding on a nearby tree.

This is actually a condensed version of an 80-minute recording, with passing cars/aircraft and long periods with little or no activity removed. The Raven segment has been left pretty much intact however, to include the wide variety of different calls the birds produce.

Recorded with 2 x AT4022 omnidirectional microphones in a parallel boundary array, connected to a Tascam HD-P2 recorder. Filtering applied with apQualizr to remove distant traffic noise, and levels boosted by 20dB for easier listening.

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.

Haldon Forest

A late June sunrise amongst the confer plantations in Haldon Forest, Devon. The energetic dawn chorus of April and May is now more relaxed, and the main singers in this recording are Blackcap and Siskin. There are also a number of deer calls throughout the recording – if anyone can ID these I’d be grateful. The forest has a large population of melanistic Fallow Deer, as well as Roe Deer. The recording was begun around 05:08 and originally ran for 35 minutes, however in this version several sections with passing vehicle noise have been removed. Recorded with 2 x AT4022 omnidirectional microphones in a parallel boundary array, connected to a Tascam HD-P2 recorder. Filtering applied with apQualizr to remove distant traffic noise, and levels boosted by 15dB for easier listening.

Posted from Newton Abbot, England, United Kingdom.