Late Spring at Sandemar Reserve;

In this episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, I will take listeners on an audio journey into Sweden's birdlife. The initial site for this episode is the Sandemar Reserve, located southeast of Stockholm city which is noted for its diverse range of bird species. Sit back and listen to the sounds of this wonderful venue, as I share captured sounds of various species including the Common Rosefinch, Marsh Warbler, Garden Warbler, Blackcap, Willow Warbler, Common Redshank, Common Snipe, and Northern Lapwing among others. Although road noise poses a minor distraction, it is generally manageable and doesn't diminish the overall field recording experience. 
 A second sound magazine, comprising more recent audio from 2023, will further immerse the listener in the wonderful late Spring soundscape here in Sweden, a time when the countryside is, quite simply, alive with birds.
The episode concludes with an encouraging note to listeners to engage more with birds in the field and I hope this may encourage a few listeners to consider possibly taking up field recording as a hobby.

00:00 Introduction to Wild Bird Acoustics

00:49 Exploring Sandemar Reserve in Sweden

02:36 Recording Techniques and Challenges

03:40 First Sound Magazine: Field Recording at Sandemar Reserve

24:25 Reflections on Podcasting and Sound Recording

25:02 Second Sound Magazine: Late Spring in Sweden

26:04 Future Plans and Challenges for Wild Bird Acoustics

01:02:51 Conclusion and call to action.

Transcript

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

  Now welcome everybody to another episode of wild bird acoustics and I really do hope you're all enjoying the spring  things are in full flow here and there's birds absolutely everywhere and I just love this time of the year now in this episode we have a lovely podcast a really special episode for you  and as always lots of amazing audio and I just want you to sit back and relax and put your feet up and enjoy that folks

 Now the first sound magazine I think is very apt for this time of the year and we're coming into late spring now and there's going to be loads of birds around in the next few weeks  I just wanted to concentrate on one of my favorite reserves and that is Sandamar reserve here in Sweden. It's located just southeast of Stockholm city.

It's coastal area has some very nice  flooded meadow areas,  lots of breeding waders,  red shank, common snipe, northern lapwing to name but a few, and lots of passage waders. It's a superb site for birds. Just beside that there's a bird tower. Inside that there's some lovely coastal woodland.

 Now close to the road there's a small patch of kind of scrubby woodland, and this is a superb area for things like common rosefinch that really like that kind of damp woodland and low kind of undergrowth.

It's quite lush in the summer, you get species here as well like marsh warbler.  The place is just full of Garden Warbler, Yggdrasil Warbler, Black Cap, the woodlands are alive, basically, Willow Warbler, Chiff Chaff, Red Wing, you name it folks. It's, it's also superb for lesser spotted woodpecker, black woodpecker.

 Then you have the actual coast itself, the Baltic Sea,  a really wide range of bird species and things like northern eider, goose ander, red breasted merganser, all to be found just offshore.

 So this place for me really comes into its own from about mid April onwards and the place is just full of birds right through the summer and again into the autumn. 

You never know what you're going to get on any given day. It has an excellent track record for rarities and passage migrants.  So, for all of those reasons, this is one of my premier sites. I just get there as often as possible   

 Now the reserve is quite close to a road  but over the years I've managed to remedy this by arriving either early in the morning and also on occasion by visiting at night. It's an excellent site for night singers 

and recording at night and early morning allows me to avoid the worst of the noise.  It's not a major problem, the road is sufficiently far away not to be a major bother. And sometimes it's just a low hum in the background.

So like I say, not a game changer.  This means I can generally speaking get some lovely recordings at any time really, at the reserve. 

 I am perhaps a little bit spoiled here in Sweden with a very quiet environment in general and a lot of the sites I do visit have very little noise. So I'm probably overly  sensitive to things like road noise. But it's always possible to edit these things  you can apply a light high pass filter in editing software after you've downloaded recordings later.

So these things are manageable really. 

 So I digress. I'm starting to wander a little bit. And I think it's time to get into that first sound magazine.

 This is field recording at Sandemar Reserve in early June. 

Early June is a fantastic time to sound record in Sweden and it was mainly due to returning night singers. Some of my favorite species sing at this time of the year and a trip to Sandemar reserve last year at that time of the year was very very productive. So I arrived early in the morning as usual and just made my way slowly around the reserve.

The first thing I came across was this fantastic white throat. 

So that was the first recording of the day and that was a common white throat and As you could probably hear it in the background, there was another species singing and that was Rhynek. Now Rhynek was a species I had recorded earlier in the year, but on this particular occasion there were two birds close together displaying to each other.

It struck me maybe that one was younger than the other, but I couldn't be sure. But whatever the case, it was two birds within about 150 200 meters of each other and they were displaying backwards and forth. And it meant that I could get a binaural recorder into place and get some really really nice recordings.

So we'll have a listen to that now. 

So after getting the Rhynek audio I was absolutely delighted and quite close by there was another songster in action. The bird was perched on top of a small oak tree and it was singing away and I was able to grab quite a nice recording. So this is Tree Pippet in full song at Sandimar Reserve. Always a nice species to get and it's quite a beautiful song. 

So as the morning walked on, I just moved around the area and came across probably one of the most underrated songsters, I think, and that is the Humble Songthrush. Now I record these quite often, these birds, and they do a lot of mimicry and I've really come to appreciate their song. It's quite beautiful when you listen to it carefully.

So we'll have a listen now to Songthrush, and this is a bird in full song, again, at Sandimar Reserve. 

So close by its landmark there were some meadows, and in those meadows there were plenty of singing skylark. And I managed to get fairly close to one of the singing birds. There's a little bit of noise in the background here from a roe, but it's not too bad. And in this recording you can also hear lapwing calling. 

So that was Skylark singing there and then it was on to one of Sandomar's specialties, which is Common Rosefinch.  Now, Common Rosefinch arrives around late May and is quite local in Sweden due to its habitat preference. And Sandomar is perfect for them. It's damp, has some nice lush kind of woodland, and the birds are always present in early June.

So on this occasion I found four or five singing males and got a nice recording, which we will listen to now. So, this is a very typical sound of wet, lush woodlands in Sweden, common rosefinch. 

Another very common species at Sandimar is blackcap. This bird was picked up singing as well and recorded at quite close range. So it's next up, nice male blackcap in full song. 

So next up a very special species to me, which is Ictarine Warbler. It's difficult to describe this bird song. It's, it's just full of mimicry. They just keep going for ages and ages and ages. And I quite often find that most males do about a 10, 12 minute loop and then kind of start again. They just keep going, keep going, keep going.

And there's some wonderful mimicry in there, as I say. And also these crazy kind of electronic toy noises that they make are. Are just fantastic. So I was very lucky on this day as well. There were quite a few miles around singing and I got quite close to a few. So here is Ictrin Warbler in full song recorded with the Tilinga Parábaila. 

So that was Ictorine Warbler and I actually got a few recordings of a few different males. We may pop back to that again later. We'll move on just for a moment. So after the Ictorine Warbler I moved along to an area of coastal area where there were common sandpipers displaying. Quite unusually for this site.

There were three or four males in the area. I'm not sure if they just kind of arrived or they were on passage, but they were displaying quite vigorously. And I stood for about 15 20 minutes recording them. So here is a recording of displaying common sandpipers. 

So there you have it, Sandemeyer in early June. And as you probably will have gathered, it is quite incredible place to go and do some sound recording. All of that was taken in one day, which is quite remarkable. 

 Now what an amazing place Sandimar is and the best part for me is it's the middle of May now and it's  really coming into its peak period now  and I'll be getting out there over the next few weeks for sure and re familiarizing myself with some of these species hopefully doing a little bit more night recording this year.

 Now it's been quite amazing the podcast since it launched and I've learned an awful lot  that last sound magazine at Sandmar was created over a year ago now and since then I've learned so much about  the nuts and bolts of actually putting a podcast together  How to manage vocals, make sure they're nice and smooth, how to edit the podcast, the nuances of proper levels of background music, sourcing background music. There's so much I didn't know last year, and I think that's actually something you will actually notice in this next section, which is quite recently put together. 

 Now this next section concerns late spring here in Sweden, and there's a lot of nice field recordings in here.  Now all of this audio was actually taken from 2023.  So this is a very recent edit of mine. Just a nice background music here  at the proper levels.  And you will probably notice straight away how clean the vocals are, and that is due to a new microphone that I have sourced. 

 Now I hope that moving forward this will provide a nicer listening experience for you all out there here at Wild Bird Acoustics. 

 So learning all the time, you never do stop learning. And I have actually found that since I actually got into sound recording boards, I have actually discovered that I really also enjoy that entire process.

So planning the entire season, putting the episodes together, editing, all that kind of stuff. It's a very, very nice process and hopefully in the future I can get to do a lot more of it.  

 It is, of course, time that is at a premium. I do work full time, so I only have weekends and evenings to actually do this.  I 

have actually already identified the biggest problem I may face in the future with the podcast is actually having the time to get out into the field and collect the audio in the field. The editing is not a problem. You can do that in the evenings after work. It's not a big issue. But actually, Having the time to get out and spend in the field to track down these birds and actually get the recordings is the most difficult aspect of the podcast, but hopefully I'll figure that out going forward. 

 My biggest fear at the moment is actually running out of field recordings.  It's going to be quite difficult I think to collect enough material within a one year period  to put together an entire season of 24 episodes every single year.

But we'll just have to see how it goes. 

 For the moment though, it's been a wonderful journey and I'm very much enjoying it. And there certainly won't be any issues with the first season of Wild Bird Acoustics. I have more than enough audio to get through that and likewise, I think a second season should be following pretty quickly after the first.   

Now enough talk, I think we will get on to the next cell magazine.  So this is late spring in Sweden  all taken from audio feel recorded in 2023 have a listen to this folks 

now as the years roll by, I find that time seems to pass by more quickly, and I suppose that's pretty much a typical human condition. I find though that I really want to concentrate on good periods for field recording and birding, and there is none better here in Sweden than late spring.  It's just a quite incredible time to be out in the field, once all the migrants have returned, and the soundscape at this time of the year is just incredible. 

Now every winter, and just before the spring, I generally hatch plans to try and record certain species or maybe visit certain habitats and 2023 was no exception. I made my plans over the winter and early spring and as soon as the spring arrived I just got out there and did as much sound recording as possible.

over the weekends. Now I work in a school during the week full time, so time is quite limited during the spring, and I really have to make a big effort to get up early at the weekends and get out and spend long hours in the field. I will often get out as well on weekdays in the evening, and this can be a surprisingly good time to get some nice recordings. 

2023 was a superb spring for me, and I had a lot of targets, and I visited a lot of incredible places. And I did, in the end, secure some wonderful audio, so I'm going to go through some of that audio with you now.  As always, before I start, I do recommend that you wear headphones as this will really help you to immerse yourself in the sounds and the recordings. 

Now the first species I want to detail is Black throated Diver. Or black throated loon, as some of our listeners from the United States might know the bird. These are quite incredible birds. It's one of the most evocative sounds of the Swedish wilderness. And it was something that I really wanted to try and get out and record in 2023.

In the end, I decided to concentrate on Tiristel National Park. And I had mixed success. But in the end, I did get a few recordings. And I'm going to run through a few of those. Now 

for the species I got out from April onwards, and I got out a little bit too early initially and the birds had not returned. But not long after the ice had broken up, a pair appeared on Lake Flotten in Tiristim National Park. Now, this site is very quiet and it's an absolute postcard of the Swedish wilderness.

And it was wonderful to spend a few early mornings with the birds.  Now Black throated diver is not especially vocal on occasion and you can sit and listen for hours without any activity. So it was quite difficult in the beginning.  I found that the birds were not terribly vocal until other pairs arrived in the park at other lakes and on occasion their songs could be heard in the distance.

This seemed to prompt the male of the pair on Lake Flotten to begin to display. But at first, I was kind of limited to getting more distant recordings, such as this one. 

Now, I wasn't entirely unhappy with that recording. After all, it was a start, but it was a little bit distant and I wanted to get closer recordings. So on the next trip, I actually arrived even earlier. And again, on this occasion, they were frustratingly silent. This may have had something to do with the fact that there were actually nests respecting.

And I watched the birds just go around the sides of the lake looking for nest sites. I did have the parabola trained on the birds throughout, but the only calls they gave were these single notes on one or two occasions.  Have a listen. 

So it was, it was very annoying to have the aeroplane pass over just as soon as the birds decided to give a bit of vocalisation. And this is quite typical sometimes when you're outfield recording and it can be very frustrating. But anyway, I decided to persevere. And on the fourth visit, I think it was, in total, I arrived to find the birds in the middle of the lake, just feeding and swimming around and doing a bit of preening.

And eventually, the male relented and gave a lovely bit of display. And this time, I was in the right position, at the right time, with the Tilinga paraplu. 

Now I was quite happy with that recording, although I had in mind a longer sequence of calls and maybe multiple calling mails, but I think that's going to have to wait. I just didn't have enough time last spring. I didn't want to spend the whole spring sitting by the same lake, and that's the problem.

Sometimes you just don't have enough time, but I'm certainly not finished with the species yet. I really do enjoy these stakeouts and projects where you go out and try and capture audio of a certain species that has somehow just. captured your imagination. And in 2024, I want to continue with Black throated Diver.

So watch this space, folks.  Another species that I wanted to spend time on in 2023 was Redneck Grabe. The species is quite a rare breeder here in Sweden. And over the last few springs, I just hadn't had an opportunity to find a pair basically on spring territory. But that changed in 2023 when a pair turned up at Angarn Reserve.

Now I didn't hang around, I pretty much dropped everything and went straight out to the reserve on the first available morning and I spent the entire morning out trying to record the species. Now this is a rather northerly breeding species and perhaps one that many of you won't be familiar with and it has a quite amazing loud song and I think I'd like it at most to that of water ale.

So, as I say, I got out early in the morning, just before dawn I arrived, and the birds were present. So, I spent about an hour and a half following the birds around, they were silent at first, but then they entered this patch of small reed, and they began to, I think they were actually ne and  they began to prospect for nesting sites, and then they gave a few calls. 

Have a listen. 

Now, after a while, the quiet calls that you heard there. Kind of gave way to more boisterous calls, and it was quite difficult actually to get a recording on the day as it was quite windy and there was an awful lot going on in the background. So in this next recording, you will hear at the start and the end of this recording a couple of short passages of redneck grebe call.

The call sounds a little like great crested grebe, but then there's a burst of what is almost a pig like squeal, and that is typical of these species. So I'll just play that recording for you now.  So I think the words were just starting to get a bit more excited at this stage, and they became more vocal as a result. 

Now, at this point, it was clear that the birds were looking at a potential nest site. So, I set up the parabola on a tripod, and I just left it there for 90 minutes and basically sat back. Eventually, I got some decent calls. As I say, it was quite difficult on the day. As you can hear in the last recording, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background.

Things like Black Head of Gull, Coot, and Greylag Goose especially. On top of that, the site is unfortunately very close to Ireland Airport. This leads to a lot of plane noise in the afternoons. So as time went on, things became more difficult.  However, eventually I did get a half decent recording, and I'll play that for you now.

This is the squeals and grunts of Rednecked Grebe at Angern Reserve. 

Now I'll move along and we'll move on to one of my favourite species groups in this spring and that is Sylvia warblers and I'm going to start with blackcap. Now blackcap returns quite early,  generally speaking around late April is when they start to appear in numbers and you can find them pretty much anywhere.

But like I say, it's a species I'm greatly interested in. Now, in this recording, you'll hear a black cap and it's giving kind of sub song or plastic song, and it was recorded at Bro Reserve in May, 2023. Have a listen to this folks. 

Now Sand The Mare Reserve is an excellent site for blackcap and on this occasion in May 2023 there were plenty of birds present and I managed to get this rather nice recording of a singing adult male blackcap. In full song.  Have a listen. 

Now quite a typical song there, quite scratchy sounding and it's extremely difficult to separate this species from another Sylvia warbler, which is Garden Warbler. And even after years of listening to this species, I am continually caught out by both species. Now I'm going to play you some recordings of Garden Warbler next.

Again, this is quite a common species in Sweden that has a particularly beautiful song.  Now as a general rule, Garden Warbler sounds a little bit more mellow. More whistling, just that little bit sweeter than blackcap with less kind of scratching sounds. And I'll play a recording now of him fishing in on the 21st of May, 2023.

This is a garden warbler in full song. More whistling, just that little bit sweeter than blackcap 

Now there you go, that's garden warbler singing at Fiskingen reserve in mid May  2023. Now we'll move on to another sylvia species and that is lesser white throat.  Lesser white throat is again common here in Sweden and first up I'm going to play you a recording of a bird calling and some thick cover and there's a nice bit of stock dove song here in the background also.

This was recorded at Augusta Reserve in May  2023. 

So that's the typical kind of tongue clicking tech calls of Lesser White Throat. And in the next recording, you're going to hear some subsong of Lesser White Throat. And this was recorded at Brough Reserve in May 2023. And in this recording, there's a little bit of noise in the background from things like Great Crested Grebe and Gadwall, and also some distant birders having a chat in the bird tower.

But it's quite a nice recording of Lesser White Throat giving some subsong and chatter in some low cover. 

When did you get started on Speed Hunting? I started from 8 months old! 

Yaaaaay! Costume style or personality? Oh, it depends It depends on how you go into a game So Cassie, We decided to dress up Weuter with a body Mmmmm like this 

What? Who do you think you are? Why don't you go to spare your tummy? Wait, you want some vaccine? You are getting cancer and needed some free time Let's take you for another ride But I don't get allergy Oh just take your time 

The um, you the the the the I don't know if you can see it, but there's a lot of birds flying around in this area. 

Just to finish up now on Lesser White Throat, I will give you a short recording of about 20 seconds of a Lesser White Throat in full song. And this was recorded at Landsort in Sweden. 

Now next up is a species I just wanted to mop up. It's very common around Europe. And that is ring necked or common pheasant. And it was a bird I just hadn't recorded in display until last year. And I got this recording at Brough Reserve once again. It is an excellent site for pheasant and what I wanted to record was a male in display when they kind of do this wing flap and call.

And eventually I got a nice recording. It's quite a brief recording and I'll play that for you now. This is pheasant in full display at Breaux Reserve. 

One of the things I love most about spring is that you can just pop out to any kind of suitable habitat and just wander around recording what you find. And quite often you get some wonderful recordings. I'm going to play a recording now of a male Pied Flycatcher in full song. This was recorded at Fissingen Reserve once again, and I came across the bird in a small copse of woodland, and I ended up getting this lovely recording.

So once again, male Pied Flycatcher in full song at Fissingen in Sweden. Enjoy this folks. 

uh, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Birds Chirping Tropical Breeze Birds Chirping I don't know if you can see it, 

but this is the um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, I don't know.  A species that I've had quite a lot of difficulty recording in the last few years next and that is stock dove. But for some reason last spring I just kept bumping into singing birds and I eventually got some wonderful recordings. I came across this stock dove at Augusta Reserve last year and it's a wonderful, wonderful recording.

And I do hope you enjoy this.  It was just sitting out in the Telegraph where I was giving song on a day I visited in mid May. Have a listen. 

uh Oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. 

Now I'm going to finish up this sound magazine with one of the best songsters here in Sweden, and that is Rush Nightingale. Now I found this bird singing on the 12th of May, and I got some wonderful recordings of it. The bird was just sitting in a low thicket of blackthorn, and it was quite easy to get a good recording of the bird.

Now there's quite a lot going on here in the background and you'll hear things like drumming great spotted woodpecker and indeed stock dove once again in the background, but I just thought this would be a nice longer recording to close out the sound magazine.  So we'll have a listen to that now. This is Rush Nightingale in full song out of Gäster Reserve in Sweden.

Umm, yeah, I believe I'll be uploading more videos as I get over the five hundred thousand subscriber milestone. My bias is Tiff and the um, um, um, um, um, the Scooby scoobies, ok? So uh, yeah, you get the idea, it's one 

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So that wraps up yet another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics. And I hope you have enjoyed it. As always, I hope it inspires a few people to get out in spring and do a little bit of recording. Or, as always, just listen to the birds. Thanks for listening in, folks. Very much appreciate it. 

 So there you go. That's a recently sound edited magazine here at wild bird acoustics. And I just hope you all enjoyed that very, very much. Once again, looking at the clock, it's time to wrap up another episode of the podcast.  We will see you again, of course, in a couple of weeks  

 Until then, I'd like to wish you all good birding and enjoy your time in the field. It's a wonderful time of the year to be out there.   

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.