Flock of Jackdaws with young in trees by playing fields and trees by the River Test in Whitchurch. The calls of the young from all around come out in this binaural recording.
Tag: birds
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Swifts on a warm summer evening
Swifts are one of the fantastic soundmarks of summer, and they sound at their best in the city, with their high-pitched screaming resonating from the houses all around. You get them in rural parts too, but the sound needs the hard surfaces of the city when they come in low at rooftop height in the warm summer evenings. According to the BTO they like towns.
The Devil’s Bird is the devil’s own job to record, too. You don’t try and track them, there’s just no hope to get anything directional on the job, and the screaming groups tend to spread out as they get close too. Just don’t even think of using a parabolic dish or a shotgun mic 😉
This one is basically the Olympus LS-10 with internal mics propped in a first-floor window, and snipped out of a long trawl for swifts, Then I used a parametric EQ to hit some of the town traffic rumble.
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Spinney Birdlife
There’s a spinney nearby, so over the holidays I got myself into the tree and rigged a pair of omnis, and stood really still. The first thing I heard was the mournful repeated tone of the collared dove, a steady counterpoint to the recording, with its mournful ho-HOO-hoo, with the stress on the first syllable. Later on the woodpigeon appears, with its ho-hoo-HOO-HOO-ho-hoo, and there are various other birds flitting around in the undergrowth.
It was a very windy day, so there is a lot of wind noise in the trees, which adds atmosphere for me, reminding me of a special moment with the birds
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Nightingale on the heath
My bike ride to work takes me past open fields and for a short stretch over some sandy heathland. I was surprised to hear a nightingale in the distance – I had to stop and listen to the lovely sound
this was recorded using an omni MP3 recorder so it’s not a fantastic species recording, but it captures the moment for me 🙂 The singing males have come all the way from Africa, and they have scouted their territories. They are hoping to call the females down from the sky as they arrive a couple of weeks later. It feels surprisingly early to hear nightingale song at the moment.
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Swans taking off, Grundisburgh
It’s not that easy to catch the beginning of swans taking off, but these took off while I was recording near a reservoir at Grundisburgh, with the ungainly splashing and creaking of wings.
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Nightjar on Blaxhall Heath
Nightjar on Blaxhall heath The mating call of the nightjar is a very strange churring sound, usually made around dusk, hence the ropey photo. The sound is eerie, as most other birds have stopped by the time this call is made. The claps are wingbeats.
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Sparrows Chirping In The Rain
One of about twelve sparrows I saw, sounds like there were many more in the flock. 1 min continuous chirping
There’s something about rain that brings out the chirp in sparrows. I counted 12 of them, but the sound of this lot in the ivy and elder bushes sounds like a lot more. Why do sparrows all get up a chirp when it rains?
recorded from Maplin electret inserts on tree at 44.1kHz PCM to a PC via mic preamp. High-pass filtered from 440Hz at 12dB/octave to reduce traffic noise