Well, Sunday morning was quiet; it being in the middle of the three
day "Mayday" public holiday and the time was 4AM. The
weather could have been better but it was dry and cloudy. The wind
was 12/14mph which gave a few problems with wind noise in
the trees, occasional buffetting of the mics and the operation of a
neighbour's bamboo wind chimes (which can be heard at
various times in the following snippets - not to be confused with a
distant cuckoo, but very similar at times).
The recording equipment was a Sony NH1 minidisc recorder set to PCM,
mic high sens., manual reord vol set to 26 for the
first snippet and 23 for the others. Two Rode NT1As angled at
60degrees and 7 inches apart were used.
I filled a 1 gig minidisc (1 hour 34 minutes) starting at 4:05 am
local time (GMT + 1hour).
I thought it might be interesting to attach a few snippets from the
hour and a half recording to give an idea of how the dawn
chorus progressed. Other than adding a fade in and fade out to each
item (and converting to MP3) the rcordings are as
downloaded from the NH1.
First a couple of minutes right at the start of recording at 4:05AM.
Other than wind noise things are pretty quiet other
than the plaintive sounds of some of the birds on the estuary. These
chaps seem happy singing all night. Now the geese have
gone back to Siberia they have the stage to thenselves; other than the
occasional duck and early riser garden bird.
http://ad2004.hku.nl/naturesound/TomR/IDCD/IDCD1mp3.mp3
By 4:21AM some of the other guys in the garden have woken up and are
starting to do their bit. Bit of wind buffeting here
http://ad2004.hku.nl/naturesound/TomR/IDCD/IDCD2mp3.mp3
Things are going along with a swing by 4:29, even a distant cuckoo
gets the urge (he has been around for 10 days now but is
keeping his distance - mic shy?).
http://ad2004.hku.nl/naturesound/TomR/IDCD/IDCD3mp3.mp3
Things reach a peak at 4:39. Someone must have let the airlines know
because the first "big bird" of the day arrives from
Australia or somewhere else in the far East en route for opening time
at the London airports.
http://ad2004.hku.nl/naturesound/TomR/IDCD/IDCD4Amp3.mp3
Finally things settle down and the big hitters (sound wise) get into
their groove at 5:28
http://ad2004.hku.nl/naturesound/TomR/IDCD/IDCD5mp3.mp3
To put things into perspective it was dark at the start of recording
and by the time I finished (5:45) it was quite light and
blackbirds and thrushes could be seen foraging. Sunrise was at 5:20.
I wish I was better equipped to identify bird song. It would have
been good to recite which bird was singing when!
So, that was my contribution to "International Dawn Chorus Day". I
hope it was worthwhile you reading this far.
Cheers
Tom Robinson
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