I was on the south-west coast path early on, and stopped to listen up what the hell was that? A sort of finchy rasp, not really that mellifluous but odd and out of place.
It is indeed out of place, the RSPB set up a specific reserve for this bird, the first they created for a single bird species!
I’ve heard corn bunting in Europe and there’s some sort of resemblance i nthe sound, but the RSPB says the cirl bunting is a close relative of Yellowhammer, which stacks up now I listen to this again. I never got to see this fellow, as I was recording it and didn’t want to flush the bird, it sound quite close.
This tawny called near the doorway of a holiday cottage in Sidmouth. It’s a lovely evocative sound. I hear them at home too, they’re common as muck according to the RSPB distribution map. This one was disturbingly close, and he was getting a reaction from another tawny. Presumably saying keep off my lawn in Owl language.
Olympus LS14 XY
Tawnies have a rep for being pugnacious and you can’t hear ’em coming . The photographer Eric Hosking lost an eye to one. I stood in the doorway, the dishwasher was running so it makes a faint background, as do the neighbours. It was a surprising encounter in Cheese Lane, Sidmouth – a row of terraced houses surrounded by other housing.
The picture’s not of this owl. Looks a bit odd for a tawny but it was a WordPress freebie. There’s a bit of an AI feel to it. The straight AI offering had gorgeous eyes but was spooky.
Owls are spooky enough on their own without added AI creepiness
Corvids were the main attraction at Buckenham Rook roost, but they didn’t find their mojo. They lined up impressively enough on the wires near Buckenham station, Norfolk.
but never really got to make that much of a din. I switched species allegiance to the geese flying overhead to their roost in an easterly direction on the marshes
I’ve heard the corvids at full tilt in the past and this was a desultory performance. They build up their ranks as the year progresses. Maybe I was just that little bit too early in the year for them.
I visited the Heron Hide at RSPB Swell Wood. There wasn’t much to see at the time, but I became aware of a disconcerting buzz. That didn’t sound like your average bee or wasp.
I saw some inch-long insects and figured it was time to beat it PDQ. Not gonna argue with these bad guys.
Lake Vrynwy is a RSPB reserve which has a lovely ambience and little noise pollution. Geese and cuckoos in the morning, from the south side of the lake
There is a little nature reserve by the canal near the football ground, an oasis of calm. The water is sluggish with green on top apart from where the water seems to well up from the river bed in these gently roiling clear pools. I don’t think the water makes any sound here, there is some background traffic noise which would mask it.
The nature reserve was improved by the Access to Nature project in 2012. It’s easy to be cynical about some of these projects but this one seems to have worked really well, and there was a lot more birdsong in this part of path by the canal than in the unimproved bits.
Seems like it’s been a successful year for our swifts, they have been breeding and screaming parties are heard overhead.
They’re still as hard to record as they were last year, however there are more of them it seems. I got the AT XY mics on the job this time. Maybe next year I will try a seriously long boom pole to get the mic pointed straight up in the air and use the directional pattern against some of the noise and traffic rumble of the town, but I’m still of the view swifts sound best in the city!
It’s R. Murray Schafer‘s birthday today. In 1973 he research the Vancouver soundscape, later extending it to compare five European villages from a soundscape point of view.
The research became the basis of ‘Acoustic Ecology’, a discipline that R. Murray Schafer developed to further investigate ‘soundscapes’, which are understood as the sonic interface between living beings and their environment.
World Listening Day is held on his birthday to celebrate Schafer’s contribution to the art of listeing to the world, rather than just hearing it. I’ve usually aimed to try and isolate sounds, other than in the lo-fi urban environment where you just can’t do that. However, in tribute to R. Murray Schafer’s ideas, I had a go, starting off with the birds at dawn. It’s a bit past the time for the classic dawn chorus, but these birds in a semi-rural location in Rushmere made a decent attempt at a soundscape for me.
XY recording
For a change I tried an urban field recording at Ipswich Marina, this recording starts with oystercatchers at the beginning, to the right is the sound of some construction work that has been restarted after a couple of years. A woman in a RIB motors to her boat moored somewhere in the marina which is mainly to the left. Some foot and bicycle traffic passes. The waterfront has been redeveloped for leisure over the last decade.
Binaural recording with Soundman OKMII
Finally I gave in to the separator in me and recorded the sound of this tarmac laying crew and their machine, in particular the backing up sound.
The reversing sound is an electronic noise played through a speaker, which highlighted one of the issues R. Murray Shafer picked up –
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.
