Turning a New Leaf; Early Spring field recording in Sweden.

The third episode here at wild bird Acoustic's, with three distinct sections for listener's interests. In the first, an older sound magazine of mine, from way back in the mists of time, will take you into the realm of early spring. This sound magazine contains some wonderful audio, taken from several locations, recorded mainly during the month of March. This is a time when resident bird species begin to become more active here in Sweden, beginning to display. The earliest migrants now begin to return and add their voices to the morning soundscape also, heralding the beginnings of a large scale arrival of migrant birds across Scandinavia...
   The middle section deals with a single species, the Song Thrush. This may be one of the most underrated singers in Europe and I have made a special effort to get out and record them at quiet locations over the course of the last few years. In doing so, I have managed to obtain some high quality audio of this species in full song and this is something you can sit back and relax to. I have decided to post these longer recordings with that in mind and decided the section would be perfect for this bonus episode.
   Finally, another older sound magazine, also dealing with the early spring period here in Sweden. Here you will get to listen to recording of a wide range of species, including some wonderful freshwater wetland species....

Transcript

 So welcome to wild bird acoustics, folks. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and I'll be taking you on a journey into sound. 

 So you're all very welcome to wild bird acoustics once again. And today I have a bonus episode for you guys. And what this will involve is some of my earlier efforts at making   sound magazines and things. And at the time I didn't really have the gear for it. So I was using things like a lab mics and that meant that the quality of the audio isn't quite as good as I would have liked.

I now have a new microphone, which I'm working with, and it seems to have just solved all of my problems. So. All of the audio from this point onwards should be nice and smooth of a nice volume and you learn as you go along folks when you're just getting the podcast together.  I've learned quite a bit over the last year, and I've been putting these together now for probably about 18 months.

So these are some of the earlier pieces I put together, but I thought it'd be a shame to actually throw them away or delete them. So I thought maybe I'd share them in kind of a bonus episode form. 

 Now so far on the podcast I've more or less followed the seasons and the first couple of episodes were pretty much about winter recording and a little introduction for nocturnal migration so that brought me to this section that I found and I put it together about 18 months ago in March here in Sweden, various species start to display, mostly resident species. It's a little bit too early for most migrants, although one or two early birds do return and one or two of them will feature in this small sound magazine. 

Now I actually played this sound magazine for a couple of friends and they advised me not to delete it rather to share it as they enjoyed it and I decided that's probably the best way to go so here we go  so let's get straight into it folks this is a sound magazine recorded in March I think it was 2021 if I'm not mistaken and there's some nice audio here for you to listen to I hope you enjoy it 

So this is early spring around the Stockholm area. A short sound magazine from Wild Bird Acoustics. Have a listen.    

  Now, after a long winter here in Sweden, I really look forward to the spring. And when early spring finally comes, it's just wonderful. Migrants begin to flood in from the south, and many species are very, very vocal.  One of the most typical species of early spring is common chipchaff,  and they can be found quite commonly here in Sweden.

I think it's fair to say that the song will be extremely familiar to most European birders.  I love the staccato notes in the song, and it's very nice to get decent recordings this bird. Now I came across this particular chiffchaff at Angern Reserve late April 2021, and I got a lovely recording of the bird as it sang the small hedgerow.

In the background, you'll hear common species like greenfinch, grey legged goose and blackbird. But we'll have a listen to this now folks. This is common chiffchaff at Angern Reserve in Sweden. 

Now for me, what's so exciting in the spring is not just that the migrants are returning, but that all birds are really busy. They're getting ready to breed and they're extremely vocal and nice species such as this coal tit, which you will hear in this next recording, I came across this coal tit singing in coniferous forest at Norra Yarborough Feltet again in April, and it was a wonderful, wonderful song.

In the background here, you will hear chaffinch, which strangely enough are very migratory here in Sweden and only return in early April. So this is a nice clear recording and it was taken with the Tlingit parabola. This is coal tit at Norra Yarborough Feltet. In Sweden. 

Um, uh, uh. 

Now sometimes when you're out field recording you just have or run into a wonderful experience and this was one of those moments. In this recording what you will hear is a pair of common crane fly directly over my head, directly over the Tlingit Prabhla which was trained on them. They just gave this blast of calm as they went over my head.

This is quite loud, it's quite explosive, and if you are wearing headphones, just be ready for it, it might frighten the live audio. It sounds like a couple of elephants flying through the forest. So this is Common Crane, and this was recorded at Tirista  National Park in April 2022. 

Now, something I will probably say repeatedly in the podcast is never, never pass common species. It's amazing how often, just after a day in the field, something that I just casually pointed my microphone at during the day, thinking not too much of it, has turned out to be a really nice recording. And this next recording is an example of that.

I came across this feeding group of Jackdaw at Angarn Reserve in April. I just decided to stick the parabola on it and see what was happening. They were quite vocal as they were poking around. And it led to quite a nice recording. So this is common Jackdaw at Angarn Reserve in April. 

Now, this next recording is quite remarkable, and it was taken at Tears of National Park on the 2nd of April 2021, and it is a lesson of sorts for me. I kind of assumed this was a different species because this recording is actually mimicry. Now mimicry is when one species actually mimics another and species do this for various reasons.

And I think at some stage we'll probably take a deep dive into mimicry here on the podcast. What I'll do first is just play the recording and let the listener decide what this is.  Have a listen to this folks. 

Now this bird was actually calling from a pretty dense area of spruce, and I didn't see it initially, and I was pretty sure it was a northern gush hawk. So I was delighted, obviously, just to point my parabola at it and record it. I was pretty sure it was a northern gush hawk, but after I stopped recording the bird, I got a bit suspicious, and there was something moving around in the spruce that didn't seem to fit a northern gush hawk, as it was jumping and hopping around the branches, quite unlike a raptor.

And as I got closer and got the binoculars on the bird, I was amazed to find it was Eurasian Jay. Now since then, I've heard them mimicking goshawks several times and also common buzzard very commonly. I think the bird has actually seen me arriving in the area and is actually calling, like a predator, to actually try and keep me away from the nest. 

These birds are incredibly intelligent and a couple of years ago I had one in my back garden and it was also using goshawk calls to keep hooded crows away from its nest site. So a cautionary tale I suppose in a way, that sometimes everything is not all it seems in the world of field recording. Now on late March 2021  I travelled to Landsort.

I spent a bit of time on the island that day looking for one species in particular and that was marsh tit.  Now I didn't have any satisfactory recordings of the species, so I put quite a bit of effort in on the day, and I was delighted when I finally got to record the species well. So, first up, I'm going to play you a recording of the calls of Marshtit at Landsort in Sweden. 

Now, happily, the birds were not only calling well, they were also singing on breathing territory. And I got a lovely clear recording of the song as well, which I was particularly happy with. So, this is Marshtit in full song at Landsort in late March 2021. 

Now Angern Reserve, just north of Stockholm City is a favourite venue of mine and I tend to spend quite a lot of time there in spring as you never know what's going to turn up.  And on this particular morning I was very happy to come across some calling mistletoesh  and I got a lovely recording of their typical rattling call.

Now this is a favourite call of mine and I never tire of it. 

Now, one of the earliest returning migrants here in Sweden is Eurasian Skylark. And they actually begin to appear as early as February. But really, the floodgates open in March. And by April, the meadows are full of singing Skylark.  Now, in a European context, I think you would struggle to come across a more famous songster than Skylark.

And everybody would be familiar with their lovely song. And on this occasion, I went out to Sandamar Reserve in early April. And on the day, there were a lot of Skylark in the area.  Now because many of the birds had just arrived, there was a lot of disputes going on with birds in territory, kind of fighting with migrant birds who were probably just resting after crossing the Baltic Sea.

And this led to a nice interest in recording. So sometimes it's nice to record behaviour. And I'll play this for you now. This is some Skylarks in dispute over meadow at Sandamar Reserve in Sweden. 

Now, if you asked me for one song that perhaps summed up early spring, I might go with Skylark. But in actual fact, I'd be just as likely to go with Northern Lapwing or Common Snipe. And here in Sweden, I just love to get out into the wet meadows and record these three species in spring. And I'm going to play you a lovely recording now of all three species together.

This was recorded at Sandamar Reserve in Sweden. The area is located on the coast and there's some lovely wet meadow habitat here. And overhead you can hear snipe drumming as lapwing display and skylark sing further back. Have a listen to this folks. 

Now, all of the previous recordings were recorded with a Talinga Prabhla, which is quite an expensive piece of kit. But I actually want to drive the point home that when you start out, you can just use a regular recorder. And in the next recording, that's exactly what I did. It was a bit of an opportunist moment for me.

I was out in a place called Norayur Garden, had my Zoom H6 with me, and I came across some singing stock dove. Now at the time, stock dove was a species I had not recorded in song, and I was very keen to get a recording of these folks. So what I did was, I just sat up in the woods and watched the birds for a while.

And it was quite obvious the birds were moving around quite a bit. But as always, as with many species, They were returning to the same perches over and over again. So I just got the recorder as close as possible and just press record. And this is recorded just for the field recorder, Zoom H6. And the quality is quite good, folks.

So I'll play this recording for you now. This is singing Stockdove at Norrie Urgården in Sweden. 

There you go. That was stocked of, and it's quite a difficult song to record 'cause it's at such a low frequency. I was quite happy with that recording, given that I was just using a regular sound recorder a little bit further down the track. I came across this singing tree Creeper. This was another song that I hadn't actually recorded.

Natural fact, I only learned this song a few years ago, and it's very, very easily overlooked in the Woodlands. So this'll be the last recording here in Swirlboard Acoustic Sound Magazine, and I hope you've enjoyed the audio. I'll close out now with this recording of a singing tree creeper at Norry York Garden in Stockholm City. 

There you go. That was singing tree creeper. And that was recorded, as I say, just on a zoom page six recorder with the in house speakers on the top of the device. And as a general rule, if you're just starting out, the closer you can get the microphones to a singing bird, the better. And sometimes, as I did there, you can just leave the recorder in position and back off and let the words sing.

So that's another sound magazine done here at Wild Bird Acoustics, and I really hope you've enjoyed this audio. Early spring is a wonderful, wonderful time to be out in the field, and I'd really recommend you get out there and have a listen.  See you next time, folks. Thanks for listening. 



 So there you go folks, terrible vocals maybe, and that was due to a very cheap lavalier mic I was using at the time, which didn't really do the business, maybe on the flip side, the recordings of the birds are well worth keeping and listening to, so I hope you did enjoy that small sound magazine. 



So not a bad time to pour yourself a glass of wine or just relax and kick back. So I hope you enjoy this folks. This is the wonderful sound of  song thrush. 

 Now one of my absolute favorite species to record is a very common species here in Sweden, and indeed it's very common across the western Palaearctic, and that species is Songthrush. Songthrush here in Sweden is highly migratory and birds leave in the autumn and return from about mid April onwards, and at that time there's a nice window where you can record the birds in the forest and a lot of other species have not yet returned.

You can get some beautiful recordings. I became very interested in the species a few years ago, and over the last few springs I've been trying to record some nice audio. No two birds actually sound exactly the same, and I have a study site at Tiriston National Park, which is located just south of Stockholm City.

And over the last few springs I've tried to get out during the winter of late April, just before the soundscape is too busy in order to record some high quality, longer recordings of the species in full song. These birds typically winter in southern Europe. Britain and Ireland and maybe North Africa and the Middle East and after they return, they sing constantly.

Early morning I found is the best time to record a species. So it's a particularly beautiful song, Song Thrush. The birds tend to sit out at the top of the spruce and they sing constantly in the morning for a few hours just after first light. It's quite remarkable to hear this sound just drifting across the forest.

Probably, in my opinion, one of the most underrated songsters in Europe and I just thought I would share a few nice recordings. So, in this section I've just decided to concentrate on one species. You will hear four recordings of four different individuals recorded over two years at Pearson National Park. 

Just a second 

Uh huh. Mm hmm. Oh okay. 

How are you, 

So that was a particularly beautiful recording. I hope you'll bear with me, it's probably a bit of an indulgence, but I really do love this BC song. This next recording is also about two and a half minutes long. Um, in the background you will hear Eurasian Siskin, Robin, Chaffinch and Great Tit. There's a little bit of Blackbird  mimicry here, which is quite typical in Tirista.

So, again, this is Songthrush  in full song, in late April at Tirista National Park, Sweden. 'Sorry. 

Well 

that's Have a look at this. Am I in the right timeline!? 

So another individual now, completely different bird again. And this time there is quite a bit of blackbird mimicry here. And in the background you will hear wren singing and also chaffinch call. This is a particularly nice recording from the point of view that there's not a lot going on in the background and it's extremely clear and you can hear a bird very well.

So once again this is um, early morning full song by Songthrush,  Tiristin National Park. Have a listen. 

So, one final recording to go at Tiriston National Park. Once again, Songthrush in late April. In the background here, you'll hear Hooded Crow, Robin, Blackbird, and once again, Wood Pigeon. So, we'll just let this run. This is about two and a half minutes of Songthrush, the final recording of the segment. Enjoy. 

Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, 

So that's the last recording of Songthrush, a very, very beautiful song, and it just demonstrates that common species can open up a whole new world to the sound recorder. This species is pretty much available to everybody, and it's species like these that can really keep your interest going. So, for example, here in Sweden, in late April, there's not that much to record, most birds haven't returned yet, but this species really is worth the effort, and  As you can hear from the recordings, there's quite a lot of interest.

You can break down the songs and I'm sure it's the species that we'll return to in future podcasts, as in different areas, the birds tend to mimic more. And hopefully in the future, I'll, I'll get a few recordings of better mimics and we can discuss them. So for now, just try not to overlook the common and enjoy your sound recording.

So I hope you enjoyed that small section on song thrush here in Sweden now, before I go, I have one more sound magazine for you.  And again, you could consider this the early spring period here in Sweden before most migrants return. There's a lot of nice species here for you to listen to. And I hope you enjoy it.   

  Now Sweden is located quite far north and that means that April is a month really that you could classify as early spring, a period before many of the migrants return. But a lot of species are early back onto the breeding grounds and I wanted to record some of these in April 2022. It's a very nice time of year to record, um, it's still quite cold generally.

Quite often the air is quite thin and you get some really nice recordings this time of year. One of the species I really wanted to record in 2022 was Little Grebe. Little Grebe returns to small ponds and habitats in late April, pretty much as soon as the ice melts. And that was the situation when I arrived at Lapsharith.

There was quite a bit of open water, but still quite a bit of ice in the ponds. But the birds were present and they were displaying constantly.  I set up my gear close to a displaying male and was really happy to get this recording. You'll hear the birds displaying in the rear bed and in the background you will hear Coot, Songthrush and Hooded Crow.

So this is displaying Little Grebe at Lapsjärt in Sweden. 



So the next trip that I took was to Tearsden National Park and I had no specific target species in mind but just decided to move around the park and record what I found. And the first bird that I did find on this particular day was a singing European robin. This was a male bird singing on territory just after dawn and it's quite a nice dawn chorus here in the background and you will hear several species.

 These include common blackbird, grey legged goose, Eurasian Wren, , a drumming great spotted woodpecker, song thrush and some calling red crossbill towards the end of the recording. So once again, this is European Robin in song at Tirista National Park. 



Um, 

So, uh, I'm going to be doing a lot of, uh, talking about, 

uh, the, I'm going to be doing a video on the um, uh, um, uh, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, 

So moving on to the park I came across this Eurasian Jay and the bird was mimicking Northern Gushawk and Common Buzzard. There was quite a bit of wind through the trees during this recording but it came out quite well. And in the background you will hear Chaffinch, Songthrush and Blackbird. The bird starts with mimicking Northern Gushawk.

before going on to mimic common buzzard for quite a while. Now I believe these birds actually mimic predators to keep birds away from their breeding territories, perhaps with their jays or other crows. But whatever the reason, it's quite remarkable to listen to this. It's an excellent rendition of both birds.

Have a listen. 

So, quite amazing there to hear that and then I just moved along through the park and as luck would have it I soon came across this feeding Nuthatch and it was calling quite a bit as I moved through the trees. So this is Nuthatch calling and feeding. 

Now within Tearsden National Park itself I have a favourite area called Overish Shiret and basically this is a freshwater wetland and within this wetland there are several interesting species breeding. On this particular morning there was a wonderful scene at the site with displaying golden eye. Now golden eye display in early spring and quite often, as was the case here, You will have a couple of females being harassed by several males.

So here's a typical display here. You will hear several males jostling two females. There's quite a lot of splashing and noise and flying around. And in between, you will hear the nasal calls of the males and the lower calls of the females. So this is quite a nice recording to display of common golden eye at Tirista National Park. 

So quite an amazing recording there, that's Golden Eye in display. So not too far away, while the Golden Eye were displaying, I could hear Red Cross building in the trees. And I decided to go and investigate. There was a small group of maybe 10 or 12 birds and suddenly one of the males started to give excitement calls.

This went on for quite some time and I got a nice recording. Now there's a high pitched call here in the background which I think belongs to Tree Creeper and you'll also hear Chaffinch singing in the background. So here you have excitement calls of Red Crossbill. 

Now after recording Red Cross Bill I decided to move back to Oversharet as there was one species in the area that I really wanted to record. This took a little bit of time but what I did was I set up a couple of recorders and just waited for it to happen and eventually two green sandpipers moved into the area and began to display. 

Now green sandpipers breed in fresh water in forests in Sweden and this is pretty much a typical late spring sound.  So this is a typical sound of Northern Forest and I was really happy to get this recording. There's plenty going on in the background. You'll hear wood pigeon, song thrush, calling ravens, coot, and quiet calls from grey legged geese. 

The birds displayed for quite a while, but this is probably the best of the audio here. So once again, this is displaying green sandpiper pair on breeding territory at Tirista National Forest. 

Now another species I really wanted to record in 2002 was Slavonian Grebe, and these birds return also in late April.  They're pretty widespread around Stockholm, and quite often you'll find them on the smallest of ponds. And it was one of these small ponds in northern Stockholm that I decided to visit.

And in doing so, I managed to record these low calls from a pair of birds quite close to the recorder. It's not a very long recording, but it's quite nice. Have a listen. 

Now there's another call given by a Slavonian Grebe, which I like to call the Creagh Calls, and it's quite different. It's a louder call, and perhaps more territorial. This was recorded at a different location, actually on the Baltic coast, in a place called Angkorudin, and here you will hear a single male Slavonian Grebe calling the Creagh Call.

There was also a second male close by on breeding territory in a small bay, and I think this bird was just trying to intimidate the other bird, and eventually they had a bit of a dispute. Oh, 

So that was Slavonian Grebe, and it is a species I will return to, probably next spring, as I would like to get better recordings. But we'll see how that goes.  Later in April I went to Angern Reserve, north of Stockholm City. In late April this can be quite a good place to record. It was a lovely day to record, it was a little bit cold, there was still a bit of snow on the ground.

But the first migrants had returned, and this was the first time I'd had a chance to record northern wheat here in song.  I found two birds on a small mound and they were singing fairly constantly and displaying towards each other. And I spent a bit of time just recording these two birds, although there was a little bit of background noise from a road nearby.

So here's the recording of Northern Wheat Ear in song. 

Now, you never know what you're going to get on any given day, but on this particular morning, I found my first willow warbler of the spring in song. And every year, this is always a nice thing to come across, and I just can't resist recording these birds. So, this is a willow warbler, newly returned on territory, singing.

There's several birds in the background. You'll probably hear grey tit, blue tit, black bird, hooded crow, green finch, and maybe a little bit of background noise from a nearby road, but it's not too bad. So this is Willow Warburn's song from Angern Reserve in Sweden. 

Now if there's one sound that really typifies wetlands in early spring in Sweden, it's this wonderful sound here, and that is the splaying lapwing. And it's a particularly beautiful noise. The birds just fly over in display flight, over stubble fields and wetlands, and give this wonderful song as they do their flight display.

There were quite a few birds displaying at Angarnam this day, and I made a special effort to try and record them. So this is a wonderful, wonderful sound. This is displaying Lapwing at Angern Reserve in Sweden, and in the background you will hear Greylag Goose singing Skylark and Wood Pigeon, all typical sounds of early spring.

Enjoy. 

So that's just a montage of recordings from last April, and as you'll probably hear, there's quite a lot going on at that time of the year. It just goes to show that no matter what time of the year, it's always worth getting out into the field with a recorder. There's quite a lot going on in early spring and it's a very rewarding time to be out in the field.

So I would recommend everybody just get out there and see what sounds you can get. Um, for now that's it and we'll move on with the podcast, but I hope you enjoyed the recordings. 

 So there you go, folks, that's the bonus or a third episode for you from wild bird acoustics. And I very much hope you've all enjoyed it. I'd like to thank all of the listeners for tuning in and listening and giving feedback over the last few weeks. 

It's been quite a wonderful experience to deal with that. And I hope you will all continue to join us here on the podcast. Once again, thank you all very, very much.

So setting up tHe podcast has been a very steep learning curve, and I've been looking at a few things over the last week or so, and have decided not to go with a Patreon system, at least for the moment, for the podcast. Instead, I've decided to employ a buy me a coffee button on the Buzzsprout head page.

As you may guess, it takes an awful lot of time to put these podcasts together. And time is actually the main factor. It's actually collecting audio in the field that really limits me 

and, at the moment, I can just manage two episodes a month. 

Suffice to say, any donations will go straight back into field recording, maybe into buying some equipment, maybe even travelling abroad to record some more species and get some more material for the podcast.

 So that brings us to the end of another episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, and I hope you've enjoyed it. As always, you can find us on YouTube by simply searching for Wild Bird Acoustics. We do have a mailing list also, and if you want to be part of that, folks, you can drop us an email at wildbirdacoustics at gmail.

com.  Now, all feedback is greatly received here at the podcast, and if you'd like the right review of the podcast. You can do so at the buzzsprout header page. In addition, if you'd like to make a small financial donation to the podcast, you can do so using the buy me a coffee button. And you'll find that also on the buzzsprout header page. 

We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more from wild bird acoustics. Until then, take it easy, folks. And as always, don't be afraid to get out into the field and relax and just listen to the wildlife out there. Maybe even do a little bit of field recording of your own.  We'll talk to you soon, folks. Take it easy.

That's all from wild bird acoustics.