The Reedbed Specialists; Late May at Hjälstaviken

In this bonus episode, I take you out to the reedbeds at the southern end of Hjälstaviken Reserve here in Sweden. This incredible site is one of the premier birding reserves in Uppland, Sweden. It offers a wide variety of species, many of which are to be found in the wonderful reedbed habitat that fringes this freshwater lake. Join me, for a day trip to the site in Late May, when many birds are actively displaying on their respective breeding territories. Experience the wonderful sounds of some rather special species at this wonderful location.
 Following the early morning spring tour of Hjälstaviken's reedbeds, I answer a question from one of our listeners. During this short section, I will also go into a little detail on how to start field recording birds in the wild, with a brief audio section on what equipment can be sourced and utilized by those with an interest in putting their first steps forward into the world of sound recording...
 I will then finish the episode with another section on Nocturnal migration, this time, concentrating on the sounds of Spring migration at Landsort, here in Sweden. I will run through several species recorded at Landsort Sweden over the past few years, complete with a running commentary on each of the recordings featured.

00:00 Introduction to Wild Bird Acoustics

00:03 The Joys of Spring and Bird Watching

01:19 The Arrival of Willow Warbler

03:12 The Return of Wood Sandpiper

03:55 The Early Arrival of Northern Lapwing

04:44 The Sounds of Gadwall and Great Crested Grebe

05:58 The Melody of Blackcap, Willow Warbler and Wryneck

08:14 The Courtship Display of Ring Necked Pheasant

08:59 The Song of Lesser Whitethroat

12:35 A Mixed Singer: Common Chiffchaff

14:58 The Distant Call of Female Northern Eider

17:25 The Busy Woodlands and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

23:10 The Displaying Common Redshank at Sandimar Reserve

24:40 The Displaying Common Ring Plover

25:55 The Returning Tree Pipit

28:48 The Call of Male Common Redstart

30:20 Conclusion and Reflections on Field Recording

Transcript

 You're  📍 all very welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics once again. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and I'll be taking you on a journey into sound. 



So here We are once again folks on Wild Bird Acoustics and I've decided once again to slip in a bonus episode just to get things rolling in the podcast and the reason for this is I just wanted to give listeners plenty of material to listen to for the first month of launch in January before I revert to a bi weekly plan.

Now from February onwards, I'll be releasing two episodes a month, one on the 1st of the month and the other on the 16th of the month, and that will continue in 2024 for the rest of the calendar year. For the moment, I just thought it'd be nice just to release plenty of episodes just so people can get used to the podcast and have plenty of material to get stuck into. 

Now it's been wonderful to launch the podcast, folks. And I'd like to thank all of you for your feedback and things have actually gone past my expectations.

The amount of downloads has been very, very encouraging and I thank you all for that. So obviously there's plenty of interest out there in the podcast and that really helps me, you know, to just keep going and publish plenty more episodes in the future. 

 I first got the idea for a podcast in late 2021 after I'd built up quite a large library of audio and it was just a question really of what am I actually going to do with this audio. And thinking about it carefully I realised I really had to put it out there and just give people a chance to listen to it.

There was no point in just burying it somewhere online or on my desktop, where nobody would actually get a chance to listen to it. So that was part of the reasoning. And also, I just wanted to share the audio, as I figured was quite a lot of educational value in it.

And as well as that, having reached out and realized there was a community of sound recorders out there, I thought it'd be really interesting for a lot of people to have something to listen to. And it was very surprised in general at the lack of podcasts online  about recording birds in the field or just the sounds of wild birds.

Now in this episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, I'm going to be playing you a wonderful sound magazine from a place called Hjelstaviken in Sweden. And a little later I'll be answering a question from one of our listeners about how to get, or how to start out rather, in field recording. What kind of gear do you need?

 And I've just tried to simply answer this question in a little kind of audio passage. After that, we will go to Knockmig Corner. And once again, we'll be listening to some wonderful sounds of nocturnal migrants. 

So that's the general outline of this episode here at Wild Bird Acoustics and we'll get cracking now I think and what I have first for you is a wonderful sound magazine from Kjellstaviken reserve north of Stockholm City in Sweden It's a quite incredible site It's a freshwater marsh area a lot of reed bed and some wonderful sounds in late May When this sound magazine was recorded Now everything you hear here in this cell magazine was recorded on the same day.

It's a very, very rich place and it is full of fantastic audio. So we'll move on to that now folks. I've reworked this one for you as it was one of the earliest cell magazines I put together and initially the vocals weren't great due to a bad quality microphone. But as I say, I've reworked it now and I hope you will enjoy it.

So this is recording in late May at Gilles de Vigan. And Sweden.  

Now  📍 it's time for another sound magazine from Wild Bird Acoustics and on this occasion I went to Hjelstaviken in late May. Now this site is one of the premier sites in Uppland in Sweden and it's located just northwest of Stockholm city about an hour's drive and if you get there in May it's just a fantastic place to record. 

Now you can get a little bit of noise from a nearby road at Kjellstaviken And it's quite close to Orlando Airport and sometimes that makes it a little difficult to record there But if you get there early in the morning, the noise isn't too bad at all And that's what I did in this occasion I just got up early and went for a wander on the south end of the reserve where there's a wonderful reed bed area there Called Spongan and the first bird I came across in this particular morning was a target species of mine And that was Savi's warbler  Now the bird wasn't in full song, but it was quite interesting and you'll hear that in this recording.

So it's quite close to the recorder and in the background you will hear a black headed gull colony as well as a singing robin. So we'll get on with this recording now. It's a Savvy's Warbler just giving some short calls. It's not in full song, but still I think you'll agree. It's quite an interesting recording.



This is Savvy's Warbler at Hjelstaviken in Sweden. 📍 



, another species that is very common here in Sweden in the spring is sedge warbler and it is another reed bed specialist and on this occasion I came across a male bird  singing in the reeds.

It was very close to the walkway at Gjelstaviken and I made for a lovely recording. Now this is a favorite species of mine. In the background here you will hear a singing male reed bunting as well as a few calling coot and a distant cuckoo.

So once again this is Sedge Warbler in full song at Hjelstaviken in Sweden. 







now for  📍 another reedbed specialist that hails to be in Sweden, and that is Reed Warbler. Now this is quite similar sounding to Sedge Warbler, but with a little bit of experience, you can tell them apart quite readily.

And I actually find one of the best ways to tell them apart is by the rhythm of the song.  Sedge Warbler is generally speaking much more rhythmic whereas Reed Warbler is more scattered and just the tempo is just a little bit all over the place But in order to get an idea of that, you can listen to the next recording.

Now once again, this bird was singing quite close to the parabola, right beside the walkway at Hales to Beacon. And again, in the background, you will hear coot calling and male reed bunting in song. This bird  is also an excellent mimic and in this particular bird song you will hear mimicry of blue tit, green sandpiper and common snipe among others.

So I'll play this for you now. It's a reed warbler in full song at Spången Hjelstaviken in Sweden in May  2022.

  





hjelstaviken is a fantastic place for one group of species and that is  the geese. And there are literally thousands of birds here in spring of a number of species. And one of the species you get in very large numbers is barnacle goose. Now this is related to a feral population that has actually thrived in Scandinavia.

The birds have escaped from captivity and are now breeding freely.  But these birds are actually migratory and in May there are literally thousands of birds that actually congregate at the site and quite often you get two to three thousand birds near the tower.

But it was quite nice just to get this singleton flying over, giving the barking call of the species. So this is a quick recording of the call, the flight call actually, of Barnacle Goose at Hjelstaviken in Sweden. 

 

 📍 Now geese were very much my target species on this particular day and another species I was very keen to record was Taiga Bean Goose and they're quite plentiful at Hjelstaveken again in the spring. These birds are on passage and they're resting up to feed at Hjelstaveken before moving on to the breeding grounds further to the east in Russia and Asia.

And it was a target species, as I say, and it was a species at the time I did not have any recordings of. So when it happened, I was extremely happy. So I'll play you this next up. This is a nice recording of Tiger Bean Goose flying overhead at Hales De Beacon.  



 

now another species I very much wanted to record on the day was Eurasian white fronted goose and these are actually not as common as tiger bean goose or in fact barnacle goose so they take a little bit of rooting out at the site And what I did was, I positioned myself on a small hillock and waited for parties of birds to fly over calling.

 Now, as you'll hear in this recording, this is a small group of Eurasian White fronted Goose flying over. And the call is very, very distinctive when you get up close. 

So once again I was very happy to get this recording at the time as it was my first recording of this species. So I'll play that for you now. This is Eurasian White fronted Goose.

  

 Now  📍 there is a very special species here in Sweden in the reed beds, another reed bed specialist, and that is bearded tit. The males are, if you can get a good view of them, they're absolutely stunning, but the vocalize,  but vocally they're quite amazing as well. And in this recording, you're going to hear the typical high ping calls of the species.

Now in the background here, you will hear gray lag goose, distant skylark, sedge warbler, and also a charming water rail. All typical species of reed bed habitat. So again, I was really happy to get this recording of bearded tit. It's a fantastic call and we'll have a listen to that now.

 



now,  📍 bird calls come in all kinds of varieties and sounds, and they're very, very variable. And this next call is not exactly what you might describe as pretty. It belongs to the species that we touched on in the bearded tit recording and the species involved here is water rail.

Now water rail is a reed bed specialist also. They're very, very secretive. It's quite a pretty bird if you see them very, very well, but it's quite a hard thing to do as they rarely leave thick cover.  Now luckily, they are quite vocal. And when they call, it sounds for all the world, like a squealing pig.

And this sound is known as Charming.  .

Now, on the day at Hjelstaviken, I got some nice short recordings of water rail. And I know it's not too pretty a noise in some ways, but we'll just give it a listen now. So, this is the very, very high pitched squealing calls of water rail from thick reed bed. Quite a disturbing noise in some ways, but very typical of reed bed habitats here in Sweden and indeed around Europe.

This is a water rail giving call at Hjelstaviken in Sweden.

 



. Now as you'll often hear me say in these commentaries, never pass common birds, . Especially if a bird is just sitting out singing and offers a good opportunity for field recording.

And that was the case with this bird, which was an adult male reed bunting. The bird was sitting right out in the reed bed, singing away to its heart's content, and I just pointed the parabola on it and grabbed a recording. , Now later that evening when I was editing the recording, I realized it was a very nice recording.

And again, this is a typical species of reed bed.  So, once again, this is an adult male reed bunting, in full song, at Hjelstaviken, in Sweden.  📍  



We now move on folks to one of the ultimate reed bed specialists and that is Eurasian Bittern. Now this isn't the greatest recording in the world but at the time it represented my first ever recording of these species. However there is a lovely background here there's a few grey lag geese but in particular there's a lot of calling wood sandpipers which provides a beautiful backdrop.

In the distance you can hear a booming Eurasian Bittern, as I say, calling from the reed beds on territory. And I recorded this with a Tillingit Parabola, and that actually isn't probably the best piece of equipment to record this species with, as its song is at a very low frequency, and parabolas tend not to do well with low frequency recordings.

 So this was at the time, the best recording I could manage. Now we'll just crack on with the recording for now. This is my first ever recording of a Eurasian Bittern at Hjelstaviken in Sweden. 

 📍 







 The next recording I have for you is a Western Yellow Whitetail and this bird is a Thunbergi in full song in Flooded Meadow and it was one of those occasions where I just pointed the parabola, recorded the bird once again, later when I edited the recordings, I realized it was a really nice recording.

And this happens frequently when you're a field recorder. Never pass anything common and pay attention to your surroundings, folks. So this is a lovely recording of Western Yellow Wagtail, an adult male singing in pasture. 

Have a listen, folks.

 



 now, considering all of these recordings were actually taken on the same morning, just goes to show you. How much material you can get at a good venue, and I'm just going to wind up now at one of the most evocative and beautiful sounds in Sweden, as far as I'm concerned. Now, I moved here 20 years ago, , and if you were to ask me for one sound that really encapsulates wild Sweden, it would probably be this species, and that is common crane.

So here you have an incredible recording of a group of birds flying over. They're actually coming in from surrounding stilt hills just to watch. Have a bathe and socialize and as they do so they're giving their typical bugling calls in flight and it's just such a wonderful noise. So enjoy this and thanks for listening to this small sound magazine.

This is Common Crane flying in at Hjelstaviken in Sweden.



 📍 

 So there you go folks that winds up this small sound magazine of a wonderful morning recording at Hjelstaviken just north of Stockholm in Sweden. As I say it's an absolutely incredible place and in general wetlands are wonderful places in late spring and early summer 

and I would really recommend getting out into habitats such as these at that time of the year. For now, I'd just like to thank you all for listening once again, and we'll move along with the podcast. Thanks for tuning in to Wild Bird Acoustics. 

   



So I hope you all enjoyed that small cell magazine folks. That was Mikael Stavikian in Sweden. Now I'm going to move along with the podcast and I just wanted to talk about and thank people for their feedback over the last few weeks and every now and then, I get a question sent through by Gmail, just a general inquiry or something like that.

And I thought going forward, it would be nice to try and answer a few of these questions for our listeners. So one of the questions I was asked was, how do I actually field record? What do I need to buy? What do I need to get? How do I go about this type of thing? And quite simply, just as a thank you  to listeners, I thought I should make an effort to answer some of these questions. So I put together this small audio piece on how to actually get into sound recording from a beginner's point of view.

Now before I actually play that for you folks, I'd like to thank a couple of people. I'd like to thank Johnny Rothwell first of all for taking the time to do a little bit of a critical analysis of the podcast to date and he made some very nice suggestions and took a lot of time to do so.

It's quite hard sometimes to get, you know, constructive criticism of a podcast or anything that you're doing. People don't like to hurt your feelings, but actually it was very, very useful information and I feel like it's going to improve my podcasting going forward.  

So thank you for that, Johnny, if you're listening. Also, I'd like to thank Noel Lennon and Daryl Brady Lavis for actually contributing to Buy Me A Coffee, the first couple of contributions, and that is very, very much appreciated. Thank you both. 

No I don't expect by any measure in the future that the podcast will make a large amount of money but it would be nice just to cover costs of podcast hosting and the script and things like that. 

So any small donations on Buy Me Coffee are very very welcome from that point of view. 

I'll move on with the podcast now. And as I say, this is an answer to a question of how do I go about starting to feel record birds in the wild? So I just put together this small piece and I'll play that now for you. Trevor, if you're listening, thanks for your question.

And this one is for you. I hope you enjoy. 

  One of the questions I'm repeatedly asked since I started the podcast is  How do you go about to start the field record and it can be very, very simple and it can be as simple as using your mobile phone. So for example, you can get out to the field and if you hear something call or start to sing close by, you can simply record it on your mobile phone.

And you'd be very surprised actually. how good the quality can be. 

Now these days there's lots of apps on mobile phones and one of the better of these is Merlin and it will actually allow you to record birds in the field even if you don't know the species and you can actually download to Merlin and it will tell you what the species is. In other words it will identify these species for you.

So for example if you go out and you hear a song thrush and you're not sure what it is you can record it on your mobile phone. And download it to the Maryland app and it will identify the species for you.  Now in this modern age it's fantastic to have such apps and it really does go a long way for new birders.

And I think in the future this is going to be a major entry point for new recorders and people who are interested in bird vocalizations. So I'd highly recommend something like the Maryland app to new recorders or people who, like I say, are just out in the field and they want to identify a certain bird singing. 

You can just press record, download the Merlin app, and it will allow you to identify whatever it is you're listening to in the fields.  Now the next step up from that is to buy yourself a dedicated digital recorder. And these start at about, probably just under 100 Euros or 100 Dollars maybe in the States.

And the simple entry models are things like the Olympus LS12 if you can find one on eBay. Or something like the Zoom HN1 and they have external speakers on them. And again, they can actually record surprisingly good quality. So that's the second step, I suppose, if you really get interested in this kind of thing.

And you can just carry these things around. It will fit in a pocket quite easily. And again, if you're out boarding or you're just out in the fields, you can just whip it out. Press record. And then you have the recording, you can go back to your computer, you can download it, put it into something like BirdNet or Merlin.

BirdNet is very good at identifying birdsong. So just to clarify, BirdNet is actually a program which you will find as open source on the internet. And you can actually just open her up and  Download a recording into it, just upload it from your desktop and it will give you a likely identification. Of course, it's not 100 percent accurate, but if you get a good recording of a lot of songs, it's pretty reliable. 

The next step up from using a digital hand recorder is to buy an external microphone.  And a lot of these small recorders will actually take a microphone and you can just plug it in. So my recommendation would be some of the Clippy EM models and the Clippy EM mics are available online So the Clippy EM 172 or Clippy EM 272 Which is the stereo version give incredible audio and you can use these in conjunction with a dedicated Digital recorder to place recorders in the fields and they are absolutely superb  And they allow you to get really good audio, especially if you can get the microphones close to the source of sound. 

Now if you want to use these as drop rigs, you can simply wrap them in plastic bags or wet bags and leave them in position in the field. And I really recommend this as a method of getting recordings. And if you have an external battery pack, so much the better. You can probably leave them in the field for up to a day or two.

And that gives you a lot of time to stake out species, leave mics close to them. and see what kind of audio you get. And like I say, it can yield incredible.  And like I say, that can yield incredible results and very high quality recordings. 

Now beyond this external mics are a bit of a minefield. It's pretty much up to you what you want to spend, but there are some excellent models. And one of these is the audio Technica 4022. It may need some kind of weather protection. But it's a more expensive option and the better the mic, I suppose, the better the audio.

But this is completely down to your budget.  Now what you want to spend on your microphone is up to you, but in actual fact, if you're going to spend a lot of money on something and fail recording, I would recommend you spend it on a microphone because microphones are the key. In other words, the better the microphone, the better the audio.

You can do all kinds of research on the internet and there's a large amount of stereo microphones available. And quite a lot of them are probably excellent. But do check out stuff like how good are they in the field? How are they with rain? And you must remember that you have to actually probably protect these from the elements in most cases. 

Now, beyond this, I suppose you can spend whatever you want on external mics and the top end mics are the likes of Sennheisers, the 416s or the 8020s. But these are extremely expensive folks and. The professional grade microphones, and to be honest, you're paying a large amount of money for a very incremental rise in quality at that level.

And that's the reason I would actually recommend something like the Clippy  EM272 stereo setup.  In general, there's no substitute for Fieldcraft, and the closer you can get microphones to birds. The better. And if you can actually get those mics close to the birds, your recordings will be quite superb. So just to reiterate, you don't have to spend a large amount of money to get excellent results in sound recording. 

Now also worth recording are parabolas and There's various models on the market. The Dotatronic parabolas are excellent. They give excellent results. Again, a little bit more expensive than say the EM272 is considerably more so in fact, and they probably retail for about 500 euros, but the results are absolutely superb.

Above this again is the Talinga parabola. It's an absolutely superb piece of kit and I use it myself and I've never regretted buying mine. I just love this piece of equipment. So basically what the dish recorders do, the parabolas, is they actually amplify sound. So you can be quite a distance away. And you can get superb recordings of birds, and they're very, very handy for mobile recording, right to recording.

And if actually that is your thing, I probably recommend you buy one of these two parabolas.  Again, it's all down to how much money you want to spend. But parabolas are an excellent option if you want to spend a little bit more money.  Now the last thing I will cover here is automated recorders. The most simple of these is a small device called an Audiomoth.

And the Audiomoth 1. 2 is available online. It's a small electronic device. And it, basically you can put it into a plastic bag. And fit a small EM  172 mono mic. And again they give excellent results at close range.  Now a step up from the Audiemop is the Wildlife Acoustics models. They have the Wildlife Acoustics Micro, Wildlife Acoustics SM Mini, and then the Wildlife Acoustics SM4.

And, if you're going to do an awful lot of automated recording, they are superb. They're weatherproof. They have long battery life and you can pre program these to record at certain times. So some of these devices will actually record for up to over a thousand hours in the field.  So these are specialized devices and basically you leave them out  and you can leave them for very long periods.

And see what's in the area and the audio is very, very good on a lot of cases at close range. It's excellent. And quite simply, once again, I will reiterate getting a microphone close to the board is quite key. And you don't have to spend a lot of money on recording gear in order to get good recordings. 

So that's pretty much a basic rundown on the various devices you can use for board sound recording. 

Now, obviously in the future, in the podcast, we will actually talk to various recorders. And we will talk a lot about recording here and we will go through all of these recorders on various methods of recording. So tune in folks. And if you want to learn more about field recording, you will learn quite a lot here hopefully. 

So the goal is for those who are interested in maybe getting into field recording, I want to help provide an overview of how best to go about that. So stay tuned here at Wild Bird Acoustics.  Now if any of our listeners have questions, please send them to us at Wild Bird Acoustics. 

So hopefully for now that's answered a few queries and questions and we'll move on with the podcast. 

Now it's time to move along once again and I would just briefly again like to thank Trevor for his question. I hope that has gone some way to answering the question and to all of our listeners don't be afraid to send an email to wildbirdacoustics at gmail.

com if you have a question or suggestion that you'd like to put through. 

Now what have I got for you now? That's right, it's Knock, Mig, Corner. So once again, we're going to delve into the nocturnal arts, that's nocturnal migration folks. And we're going to go through some recordings from the late spring period. All of these were taken at Landsort in Sweden, which is my primary recording station here. So without further ado, we'll belt straight into that now. This is Nockmig Corner and as always enjoy. 

   Welcome, welcome to Nockmig Corner once again folks and we are going to have a look at the island of Landsort on this occasion  and in particular we're going to be looking at spring migration.  Now Landsort is the most southerly of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago and it's about two kilometers long and very narrow just a few hundred meters wide.

And there's a lighthouse at the south end. Now just back a few hundred meters from the south tip of the island is the bird observatory, Landsort Foggel station.  And since 2021, I've had an autonomous recorder, a wildlife acoustics SM mini recorder, On the roof of the observatory. And I've been recording from the beginning of March until the middle of November in each year.

And the results have been absolutely fantastic. I think I'm up to about 70, 000 bird calls in total here in the last three years. And there's over 100 species of bird recorded so far. And that's all at night in the hours of proper darkness.  Now, as this is the beginning of spring, I thought it would be a good time to just run through some spring recordings with you.

And that's what we're going to do today.  Now, just to remind you before I start, for those who haven't maybe listened to it, there is an introduction to Nochmig or Nocturnal Migration recording in episode two of the podcast, if you want to go and listen to that.  But right now, let's go and listen to some spring recordings from Landshark. 

Now, the first recording I have for you today is a classic Nocturnal Migrant. And that is coot.  Now coot is very, very common in the UK and Ireland, but here in Sweden, out on the Swedish archipelago, it's actually quite scarce, and there's not an awful lot of diurnal records on Land's Earth. But every year in spring, I get a handful of birds flying over in the night. 

Now if you do take up knock mic recording, this is probably one of the species that you will get quite regularly. They can be very, very variable, but this is pretty much a typical call from a passing coot.  Have a listen.

 Now, on the 11th of April, 2023, I recorded a species for the very first time after three years of recording, and I was absolutely delighted to get the species. The species I'm talking about is Eurasian Bittern.  Now Bitterne is very, very rare on Landsart. There are only a handful of records  and this represents the first Eurasian Bitterne in many years.

And it's quite a good recording as well. So we'll have a listen to that now. This is Bitterne over Landsart on the 11th of April, 2023.  This was quite a special record for me here at this site this spring.

 Now another classic spring species at Landsort, which peaks in April, is Golden Plover. And I particularly like this call in a nocturnal context. It's quite a beautiful plaintive kind of whistle. And like I say, they're quite regular in April and again in the autumn in Landsort. But right now I'm going to play you a particularly nice recording of a passing group of golden plover in April 2022.

 Now another very regular wader species at Landsort is common ring plover and I get hundreds of birds every year and quite often they go over quite low and leave a nice recording. So next up is common ring plover. This is another nice recording and this is from the 27th of April 2022.

 Now nocturnal recording or nockpicking as it's known increased dramatically in popularity during the COVID pandemic and the reasons naturally where the borders were housebound. And in order to kind of have an outlet, a lot of people started recording of their houses in their gardens at night. And one of the main discoveries, if you like, of that period in the UK was an overland passage of Common Scoter.

Now Common Scoter is very regular at Landsort and it starts going through in April and peaks around the last week of the month. Birds continue to pass through the early part of May, and then there's a small return passage from late July.

 So this has become very much a classic nocturnal migrant and the calls are very low on the spectrogram, very low frequency and they're quite distinctive once you learn them. So I'll play a recording now for you of a passing group of common scouter at Lanzert.  Now if you listen carefully to this recording you will also hear another species which is actually displaying in the area at night and that is woodcock.

So, quite a nice recording once again, and we'll have a listen to that now.

 Now, before I move on from Common Scouter, I'm going to play you another recording of the same species. And this one is very interesting because among the flock is a single Coot Calling. So, this is a very, very nice recording, actually, of Common Scouter, and it's a very large group passing. And like I say, in the middle, you will hear the calls of a Eurasian coot. 

And also towards the end of the recording, for those of you with sharp ears, there is a single faint redwing call. So we'll have a listen to that recording straight away.

 On Landsort, passerine species are quite limited, really, in spring. One of those that does pass in very, very small numbers is Skylark. This was recorded on the 4th of April, 2021. Have a listen.

 Now, wildfowl have actually been surprisingly scarce over the years on Landsort, but one of the regular species is Eurasian teal. And in this next recording, you're going to hear the calls of male teal, which are the kind of high, kind of,  which are the kind of low, mellow whistle noise, which is a kind of a low, mellow, single whistle. 

Now, in this recording, you're going to hear the calls of both the male and the female and the male is this kind of low kind of note, a single kind of mellow. I wouldn't describe it as a whistle, but the female is much more raucous and, you know, sounds more like a duck or what one  Or perhaps what one might expect of a duck, kind of a raucous kind of quacking noise.

And there's a series of those calls here from a female bird. We'll have to listen to that now. This is Eurasian tail at Landsort on the 1st of May, 2023.

 Now next on this knock mid corner section is audio of a Hooper Swan.  And this was recorded on the 9th of March 2021. And it's one or two birds just slowly passing over the islands. So Hooper Swan is a very kind of distinctive species. And it passes over in small numbers in both spring and again in the autumn. 

So we'll have a listen now to Hooper Swan.

 The next species is yet another wader and it is also another classic nocturnal migrant. And it is Common Snipe. Now Common Snipe is a very common braider all over Sweden. And they return in massive numbers, so it's not surprising really that they are regular on the island on migration. I'm going to play a recording now of probably two individuals passing over the station in late March in 2021.

 Now on Landsort, geese species are quite scarce. There is one regular species and that is barnacle goose.  Now barnacle goose has increased dramatically in Scandinavia in the last 20 or so years. And the reason is an escaped feral population. Which has multiplied rapidly and now there are masses of birds, and these birds actually migrate, they don't stay in Sweden, and they leave in the autumn and return in the spring.

So quite often in the spring I will get small groups and sometimes large flocks of barnacle goose. For now, I'm just going to play you a short recording of a small group of passing barnacle goose.

 Now another regular species in early spring at Landsort at night is a lapwing. And these birds return early, in fact they're one of the earliest returning migrants and every year in March they just flood through quickly in large numbers as the thaw begins. And quite often they'll appear just before the break up of the ice.

This species peaks at Landsort in mid April and although numbers aren't huge I do get them regularly around mid month. So I'm going to play a nice recording now of some passing lapwing in the middle of the night. And this was recorded on the 14th of April, 2022.

 Now in episode two, I did an introduction to knockmigging, and that was based in Stockholm city. And in that sound magazine, I played a recording of water rail. And guess what folks, water rail is also regular way out in the archipelago  in spring. And incredibly now I've had several records on migration, and it really is quite amazing.

It's just not a species, I suppose, that I ever associated with migration. And it's amazing to think that these birds are moving at night in large numbers. But it's true, and even at Landsort, I record them regularly in spring, and I have several records annually. So this is quite a nice recording of the species.

It's quite short, but this is a water ale over Landsort in April 2021.

 Now, every Nockmig site has its own characteristics and perhaps special species. And being out on the Stockholm archipelago puts my recorder right smack bang in the middle of the flight line for a very nice sea duck species. And that is a long tailed duck. Now, I wouldn't imagine a lot of sites get long tailed duck on migration at night.

But here in Sweden, there's a very, very strong spring passage of this species. And I do get the odd bird coming over the island at night calling. So this is a wonderful recording, folks. This is a long tailed duck just coming over the recorder in the middle of the night. And in this recording, you will hear the bird approaching from the distance before going right over the recorder.

 So there we are, that is the last bit of audio for you in this small section about knockmigging in early spring. And I would encourage you guys, you know, if you have a back garden or a balcony, Or you can get a recorder onto your roof. It's quite simple to actually record at night.  What you need is a small digital recorder.

It can be as simple as that. You can just place it into a bucket or a basin and leave it out overnight.  To protect it from rain, you can actually just stretch cling film over the bucket or basin. And that doesn't really affect the audio that you record. If  you're going to buy a digital recorder and you're going to use it for knockmeg, I would actually make sure that it has a decent battery life.

And the longer the better. Obviously, if you're leaving it out overnight, you would ideally want it to last for seven or eight hours. But with some recorders, you can also use an external battery pack. 

So food for thought maybe for a little project for the spring. And why not try and find out what's flying over your home.  But failing that folks, I do hope you have enjoyed this small knock mid corner here at Wild Bird Acoustics. As already mentioned in the podcast, we will be returning to this section quite regularly.

So there's going to be lots more nocturnal migration for you here in Wild Bird Acoustics.  Once again, folks, thanks for listening. 

 now there you go. That brings us to the end of Episode 5 at Wild Bird Acoustics and time really is flying by 

now, as I sit here recording and putting this episode together, it's late January 2024, and it's very, very cold here in Scandinavia. Temperatures are down to about minus 18 at the moment, so I'm pretty much housebound, hence the extra bonus episode for you this week. So, I hope you very much enjoyed it, And like I say, I will be getting back to publishing now every two weeks.

 I just want to thank all the listeners for tuning in to wild bird acoustics.

And we hope you will tune in again to listen as I bring you on a journey into sound.

 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.