The Sultans of Spring

 In this episode I recount what it is that draws me out into the field to sound record birds, how my interest in field recording initially formed and how it has developed, over the past several years.
 The main feature, an extensive sound magazine then follows, with some high quality audio of a range of wonderful species from here in Sweden, all recorded over the Spring of 2024. At the time, I was travelling to various sites and making a special effort to secure some very high quality recordings at a number of very special venues. Many of these trips were made under the cover of darkness in order toavoid any noise pollution, a tactic which was generally highly successful and the result was some very special soundscapes indeed. Join me, in order to enjoy these stunning recordings, during a period when migrant species are returning to the landscape and fill the air with their wonderful song...

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. 

 So I was asked a very simple question recently, and that was, what is it that draws you to go out into the fields and record birds? It's a very simple question and also a very difficult question to answer.  I suppose I have to go back a long way, and I've been birdwatching since I was a young boy. Now looking back, being out in nature has always given me a great sense of freedom.

and has allowed me to just kind of release the stress I feel in life. In some ways that wasn't always the case. I didn't feel stressed as a young lad, of course. I wasn't really aware of stress and my parents always let us just follow our own way and they never discouraged me from getting out into the field and enjoying birds.

In fact, they actively encouraged it. 

It's very hard to put my finger on it, I suppose, but I do have to credit my father for initially getting me out there and I have very young memories, very early memories of My father bringing me out into the field and just, I suppose, birdwatching with me. He was a man from a different generation, I suppose, and as a boy he used to trap finches in order to make ends meet.

And he came from Lunterra from Dublin and from a very kind of working class background. There wasn't money around, he had 13 brothers and sisters. And as a kid, he used to hang around with some guys. And they actually used to trap finches, goldfinch, linnet and things like that. And later in life, he was not very proud of that fact.

But what it did do was it gave him a real appreciation of the natural world. And when I came along, he used to bring me out into the field and just point these things out to me. I always remember him talking about things like goldfinch and bullfinch and later in life, how scarce these things have got.

In actual fact, one of my earliest memories is of my father bringing me out to see a large flock of goldfinch at a place called Howthead in Dublin.  He'd found these birds or come across these birds feeding in a large field of thistles. And it's one of my earliest memories of my father.  So I think he probably planted the seed of  bird watching and enjoying the outdoors with me. 

My father provided me my first pair of binoculars and after that it was really, there was no looking back. I was all over the east coast of Dublin, just enjoying birds, learning how to identify birds and I was mentored by a lot of people in Dublin. The late Ronan Hurley was one, he was involved with the Dublin New Ornithologists and I have very fond memories of him.

Morad Rutledge, Sean Goodmartin and these people were all involved in just getting kids out into the field. Teaching them about birds, showing them birds through a telescope. Basically explaining how to identify boards and after that I just kept going and eventually got my own scope.  Fast forward a few years, I wouldn't say a very accomplished boarder, but I was learning all the time. 

And by my late teens I learned quite a bit and then it was time to spread my wings. I got down to places like Tecumseh, Cape Clear in Ireland, all premier boarding sites and then my horizons really opened. But it was years later, actually, before I actually get into sound recording. And natural fact, I didn't buy my first sound recording equipment until 2012. 

And it's amazing looking back, you know, some of the things that really inspired me, not just people, although mentors are very, very important. And I think they are still to this day for any young boarder. But also publications like, I remember JTR Sharrock's book on the boards of Cape Clear Island. The Shell Guide  to Bird Identification. 

The Peterson Guide. All of these things were huge for me. You know, books were a huge part of, you know, soaking up and learning about birds.  Later, the Collins Guide came, which is very important. But there was also earlier books like the Brendan Chase, which is more or less a novel. And all of these things really fed into my imagination.

I remember a chapter about that, about looking for honey buzzards, and it just really fired my imagination. And  looking back now, you know, it's, it's not to be underestimated, these kind of  influences on a young mind, and it really does spark an interest sometimes in young people.  Another cue which influenced me was Lars Johnson and his books on the birds of Borden Coast and others were quite incredible to me.

I was always good at art, interested in art,  and I began to draw birds as a young man. And to this day, I still do that. It was years later, really, that I really began to pay closer attention to board calls. And it dawned on me suddenly that  it wasn't just your eyes that were important and boarding with certain boarders in the field, like Dave McAdams and Anthony McGee and then others  really brought a home to me.

You know, how do these guys know when there's just stuff around like that? They could just call something out. Something was going over their heads.  It was like, how did they do that?  And of course they had a lot more experience aboard coals and at the time there was no internet. You couldn't simply go onto the Zenokanta and learn the coals say of three pipet.

So  it was a board I didn't see until I was like 20 years old until I travelled to Sweden for the first time. And I saw hundreds of them on the golf course at Falsterbo. And then for the first time I heard the coals and realised that all of the descriptions of their coals just,  they weren't, it's not that they weren't accurate, it's just  they weren't sufficiently described. 

to me, it's very, very difficult actually to describe bird calls. Unless you have experience of them in the field, you will not be able to identify them. So I think that's where seeds were planted of recording birds or gaining experience of bird calls.  I still remember my first heartland buntings, which were on Capelar Island in Ireland.

And I heard them coming in. I just didn't know what they were. At that stage, I had to familiarize myself with all the kind of common birds in Ireland.  I knew they were different. I didn't know what they were going to be. But when I clapped eyes on them and identified Misartyl and Buntings, I was just like, so that's what they sound like. 

So nowadays, I suppose it's a little bit different. You can go on to Xenocanto. You can learn a host of bird calls and it's a wonderful resource for all young birders. But at the time, I just  did not have that resource. And it was very frustrating in some ways.  You have to wait to hear a bird in the field before you can learn to call.

Now, looking back on all of this, I don't think it'll actually change anything.  It probably would have made me a better bird or younger to have these resources at my disposal. But actually learning the hard way, if you want to call it that, was quite rewarding. But at the same time, with the advent of new technology, when it did come along and when I became aware of it, I decided to go out and buy myself a Tlingit parabola.

And that's quite typical of me. I looked at a lot of recorders and thought, well, when I get straight in there and at the time  I'd become acutely aware of all the kind of vocalization I was paying a lot more attention to vocalizations in the field and trying to learn as much as possible. And I just thought maybe buying a problem would actually speed the process up on it has proved very much the case.

And natural fact, it has gone way beyond what I expected of it, and it has opened up a whole new chapter of interest and intrigue, and I just love it. It's great to get out into the field, and if I'm honest, it's probably taken over  most of my birding interest, and I'm now pretty much devoted to recording as much bird sound as possible. 

To give you kind of a daft analogy, it's like If you start driving a Vauxhall Astra, you probably never noticed one before. But as soon as you buy one, you will notice them and identify one every time you pass it on the street. And it's the same thing when you actually learn how to identify a particular bird by call.

All of a sudden, you just start to see them everywhere or hear them everywhere. And they just don't escape your notice. And you actually realize sometimes these birds are much more regular than you thought. And In a way, it's kind of a deafness, not to know a certain bird call.  So in a way, it's kind of like opening your eyes or more accurately, opening up your ears and learning to use one of your main senses.

And I think hearing is actually highly underrated. But once you begin to tune into it, you realize what a valuable resource it is. 

So that's maybe an explanation from a birding sense,  but it doesn't take into account the the sense of relaxation and release and just general well being. I feel when I'm in the field, when I'm out, we're listening to birds and that's something I think everybody should really experience.  And it really is great to immerse yourself in bird sound.

Just get out there, have a listen. You don't have to do any recording, but I'd highly recommend it. If you're not a birder, you can actually just get out and just relax and sit back and enjoy the world. Close your eyes and listen to it. I'm a joy board song. If you are a boarder, you can get out there and you can identify things.

You can learn how to identify pretty much everything around you. And just for your general well being and relaxation. It's just a wonderful thing to do. It's difficult thing to explain, I suppose. But I think it's pretty self explanatory. It's nice to get out into the world, into nature, and just forget about all of the other stuff that just kind of goes on.

All the madness of the modern world, social media, the news. And everything else, it just, I think  it just makes us forget what a wonderful place is just sitting out on your doorstep. So I think that's, that's what really draws me to sound recording.  It's just getting out in nature, relaxing and just enjoying being in the moment.

And  it's very nice to be able to just sit back and simply enjoy being where you are. And I think that's,  Probably the best explanation I can give you as to why I enjoy sound recording so much.  Pretty simple really. 

 Now folks, a belated welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics. This is the third episode of the second season and that was probably an overlong answer to a question I was asked by one of our subscribers here at Wild Bird Acoustics. Now, considering I've already waffled for about 11 minutes, I think the only decent thing I can do Is good on with the main sound magazine which is entitled the sultans of spring Now in this sound magazine, you're gonna hear various species recorded from all over the place here in Sweden It's based on the spring chorus the wonderful return of migrants in the spring and there's some lovely species in here I do hope you're gonna enjoy this is some very high quality audio And again, most of this is recorded with Sennheiser 8020 stereo microphones, and it's quite wonderfully high quality.

 Have a listen. 



 

  Now, welcome to another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics,  and in this sound magazine, I'm going to be bringing you a selection of spring sounds from here in Sweden, a quite wonderful time to be in the field. The first recording I have for you concerns Blackcap,  and it's a wonderful recording.

It was recorded at dawn at Augusta Reserve in May 2024. And one of the wonderful things about this recording is a booming bittern in the background on 55 seconds and 3 minutes 53 seconds. So listen carefully for that, you can hardly miss it. Also in the background here you've got Chaffinch, Black Headed Gull, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Willow Warbler, Grey Legged Goose, Singing Stockdove, and towards the end, a Calling. 

So we'll have a listen to that first. This is a Black Cap singing at dawn. Auto Guest Reserve in May, 2024. 

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Next up is a recording from Sandimar Reserve, a place called Hogarn, and it's a wonderful site for lesser white throat. Now I found this bird singing away, and it was quite glorious, there was a lovely ambience in this recording from some buzzing insects. May just starting to warm up, and in the background here there's singing Yellowhammer, calling Redshank, there's Skylark in display, Barnacle Goose are everywhere, Chaffinch in song, Black Cap Garden Warbler, calling Common Gull, a singing Goldcrest in the distance, and some calling Hooded Crow.

It's a glorious recording. So here's three minutes of lesser white throat in song. 

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Now, each year in May sees the return of a favourite songster of mine. It's a Delorean songster, it's the only way to put it, and it is Thrush Nightingale. Now, I got a wonderful recording of the species Autogasta in mid May 2024. And in the background, at about 1. 35 in this, you will hear a booming bittern, which was close by in some reedbeds.

But the main subject here is Thrush Nightingale. Now there are other species here in the woodland, but by far the dominant songster here is Thrush Nightingale. I won't go into too much detail on that, you can pick a few species out in the background if you like, folks. But the main subject, as I say. Is a wonderful thrush nightingale.

This is an amazing recording recorded with the Sennheiser 8020 microphone array. Have a listen to this, folks. 

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um, um, um, Whistling Chirping Whistling Chirping Chirping Chirping  We will, we will. We will, we will. Transcription by ESO. Translation by So, uh, 

I don't know if you can see it, but there's a lot of birds in the background. 

Next up we have a reedbed species for you and that is reed warbler. Now reed warbler is a phenomenal songbird and I quite enjoy this song. It's on occasion full of mimicry, but this bird was very, very close and was recorded with a Tlingit parabola. Now in the background here you will hear distant sedge warbler, coot and call.

Blue Tit, White Wagtail, Flight Call, and also the Song of Wood Pigeon, among others. But very close to the parabola was a singing reed worker. This is about five minutes long, folks, but it's a beautiful recording. So I'm going to play it for you in its entirety. I hope you enjoy this. This is a singing reed warbler recorded at Fishing and Reserve north of Stockholm City in May 2024. 

Now, the next recording also comes from Fissing and Reserve. It's a wonderful reserve, but it is a little bit close to a road, so it's difficult to get to as well in the middle of the night without a car. But I got this wonderful recording of Garden Warbler at the site in May 2024. I think this was recorded on the 21st of May, if I'm not mistaken.

In the background, you'll hear Pied Flycatcher, a distant Thrush Nightingale, some Barnacle Goose and other songs. But there's a Garden Warbler here. It's very close to the parabola. And it's a very nice clear recording of a wonderful song. So Garden Warbler, it's a favorite species of mine. So I'm going to play that recording now.

This is Garden Warbler in full song. 

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Now, a very common species, folks. It's greenfinch. And I recorded this bird just giving this trilling kind of call or song at Landsort on the 1st of May, 2024. And it's just a lovely little recording. It's quite short. Listen for a single call from a brambling right at the start of the recording. There's some blue tip in the background, and then towards the end some calls of other Green Finch and some Song of Green Finch as well, which just kind of builds the recording.

So this is Green Finch at Lant on the 1st of May, 2024. 

When I visited 1st of May, Greenfinch were very much in evidence, they were all over the place, which was quite nice to see because the species suffered some sort of a viral or some other kind of disease, I'm not sure exactly what it was. But it wiped him out a few years ago and numbers were very, very low for a number of years. 

But like I say, they're making a bit of a comeback now. And that's wonderful to see because the song is absolutely magnificent. And I'm going to play you a little recording I grabbed that day of Greenfinch in full song at Landsort. In the background is Gray Tit, Yellow Hammer and Common Gull calling. But the main subject here, very close to the parabola, is a singing male Greenfinch.

Have a listen. 

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Now we travel a little further north of Stockholm to a place called Bro Reserve. and a very short recording of the odd nasal calls of a wild fowl species. The species is gadwall, it's a species of duck, quite similar to mallard in some ways, about the same size, but grayer in plumage. Now in the background here you'll hear great crested grebe just starting to do a bit of courting display.

There's a little bit of wood sandpiper, some lesser white throat, and a calling great tit. But listen for the wonderful nasal calls, kind of quacking nasal calls of gadwall. Have a listen, folks. 

Now back south we go to Landsort again on the 1st of May and another finch species. This is a goldfinch and I found this bird just quietly calling away from the treetops and I particularly like this call, it's absolutely wonderful too here. As always at Landsort there's always a bit of ambience from the Baltic Sea in the background which is always quite nice.

There's some blue tit here. Some Chaffinch and Yellowhammer in the distance. But listen carefully for a few calls of brambling here too. But the main subject here is Goldfinch. Have a listen to this bird just quietly calling away in the treetops. 

Now the Tlingit Prabhla is fantastic for moving around, being immobile, and grabbing recordings on the go as it were. And in the next recording, I think that demonstrates this perfectly. You're going to hear a tree pippet in song. There's a little bit of handling noise at the start, just as I get my parabola onto the board.

But the other thing that happens in this recording is a quite remarkable recording of a drumming snipe overhead. So in the drumming display, common snipe actually extend their outer tail feathers and the wind actually whiffles through it as the bird dives through the air and it makes the most incredible sound.

So that's what you're going to hear now. There's other species in the background, but the main subject here, the main songbird is Tree Pippet. And in the background, you will hear the drumming display of Common Snipe. This was recorded at Sandemeyer in May of 2024, and it's a nice little short recording.

Have a listen to this. 

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So that's three people there and an absolutely remarkable sound drumming snipe overhead. It's just an amazing sound and I hope you enjoyed that folks. It's a wonderful thing to record here in the spring in Sweden and I'll never tire of getting out and listening to that in the spring.  Now, the last recording of this particular sound magazine is a long recording.

It was also recorded at Sandemeyer, and it was recorded at night. Now, I made several trips to Sandemeyer this spring. It's a place I just can't get enough of, and the reason for that is it has a lot of different types of habitat and interesting species. But arriving at midnight at the place is just incredible.

You get so much going on. There's waders on the meadows.  There's a lot going on offshore as well, goose under, common oyter in display, you never know what you're going to get, but on this particular morning, just as the sun began to rise, there was this incredible soundscape and I left the Sennheiser's out just to take it in.

You're going to hear some of that now, this is from a much longer recording. So this is basically a soundscape of the meadows, coastal meadows at the Santa Mara Reserve in May 2024. You're going to hear lapwing, you're going to hear red shank, common snipe, skylark overhead, goose on their offshore, barnacle goose calling, greylag goose as well, displaying either offshore some ring plover, and then, as the sun rises, the display of common crane in the distance.

The whole thing makes for an absolutely wonderful soundscape. 

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So there you go. That wraps up another soundscape. Here at Wild Bird Acoustics. I've really enjoyed putting this one together, and I think there's some wonderful audio in there for you.  It struck me as I was putting this sound magazine together that quite often, common species lead to wonderful recordings.

And quite often in the field, I just point my parabola. at these species, and it's only later on when I actually edit the recordings. I really appreciate the true value of them. So some of these are quite nice. So once again, folks, never neglect common species when you're out field recording.  So stuff like goldfinch and greenfinch, even blackbird, all of that stuff, you can get some wonderful recordings from those species.

They're beautiful songsters. That's it for me, Alan Dalton here at the podcast. I'd like to thank you all as usual for listening to the podcast. And we couldn't do it without you guys. We'll see you next time here at Wild Bird Acoustics.

 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 gratefully 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.