The Call of Coastal Woodlands

In this episode, I briefly outline my approach to sound recording birds in the field. I share some of my insights into my own recording technicques, give some general tips of what to do and what not to do and offer some advice on recording equipment. 
 Following this, the main feature of the episode is a carefully presented sound magazine, featuring my efforts to record various species at coastal woodlands here in Sweden, all during the Spring season. These habitats are remarkable locations, which burst into life as Spring migants return to Sweden. The sounds of these wooded areas, along the Baltic Sea coastline, are quite remarkable and are made of of an incredible diverse number of birds species. This makes for a rather special habitat in which to field record and that is what drew me to these areas repeatedly over the course of 2024, often at night, in order to secure as much natural audio as possible...

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, I wanted to take a little bit of time to answer a question I was asked recently by email, and that is, what is the best way to go about field recording?  And I think obviously it's very difficult to answer that in, um, any kind of concise way. So I thought in this little section, I would run through my field recording techniques, and they vary greatly.

So the first thing I would say with field recording is get your microphone as close to the bird as possible. Now at night time this can be quite easy, quite often birds that sing at night, it can be very easy to place a microphone close to them. So that's one option you have, get out at night. Also early in the morning, birds, especially when they're just back on breeding territory, can be very preoccupied with breeding and you can get a mic quite close to them quite easily.

Now, you don't need to buy expensive equipment, um, something like a clippy monomic and a zoom HN1 recorder has done wonders for me, you can get excellent recordings with these if you get the microphone close to the bird.  Now, other kinds of equipment like parabolas really help the recorder in that they amplify the signal or the sound you are recording.

So, buy one. When you point the parabola at a bird, it amplifies the sound, isolates the sound, and it really does help. You can stand quite a long way back, say from a singing blackbird, and get a quite incredible recording for the parabola. So if you can afford a parabola, that's a wonderful piece of equipment to actually go out and obtain.

But again, I know they're expensive, so it's not for everybody. So if you're just starting out, I'd say just get yourself a simple digital recorder, something like a Zoom, HN1 or pick up an Olympus LS12 online secondhand. They're wonderful recorders. There's a whole range of recorders out there and I wouldn't say that many of them actually record much better audio than others.

It's actually a fact that even the cheap recorders record quite exceptional audio and it's more about getting a decent microphone close to the board. If you're going to spend much on anything, I would say spend it on the microphone. It's quite like photography. better off to spend money on the lens than the camera.

It's the lens that does the hard work. And  and that's very much the case with field recording. So if you can get yourself a really high quality microphone, if you can afford it, you will get certainly get better recordings. 

Now, there are other ways of field recording. So you. What we're talking about right now is active recording, where you are in the field looking for a subject to record and you are pointing a microphone at the bird in order to record it while you're there. There is also another way of recording birds, which is passive recording. 

And this is a completely different way of sound recording.  So with passive recording, what you do is you place a microphone in the field, leave it there.  Maybe for a few hours, or even days, or in some cases, weeks. And you come back later, pick up the recorder, go home, and put it on the desktop, and analyze the audio, and it's a superb way of getting audio of a lot of different species. 

Now I would say the nicest thing about passive recording is that you get very, very natural audio of birds. You are not there, you are not in the environment, you do not affect them, and as a result, the audio you get is completely natural. So that's one of the big pluses of passive recording. Obviously, it saves you a lot of time.

You don't have to be there. You can just scope out an area. Check it out. I would say it's always a good thing to do. Stake out an area and think carefully about where you're going to plant your microphones. With regards to the microphones, there's a lot of different systems out there. You can plant something as simple as a Zoom HN1 recorder.

Maybe with a clippy or a mono mic attached, and you can get some wonderful soundscapes and recordings with that. I'd recommend a stereo clippy setup if you're using this technique. There are other devices, such as AudioMods, which are relatively cheap. I think they're about 70, 80 euros now at the moment.

They don't require an external mic, but you will get, as I say, better results with something like a clippy mono mic on these recorders. Lastly, you have the wildlife acoustics recorders. They're a little bit more expensive. There are a few hundred euros for the mini recorder, but these are quite excellent. 

If you can afford to get a second stereo mic for the mini recorder, so much the better. I think the recordings are much better in stereo. I always prefer stereo recordings, but like I say, it's more money. So I think that probably set you back about 500 euros, but it's an amazing piece of equipment. You can leave it out in the field for up to a thousand hours.

So that's a remarkable thing to be able to do. Just leave something out for several weeks, come back and collect it. You can record just at night, maybe for an hour in the morning. You can pick whatever time you want to record at. So it's a wonderful tool for recording things like owls or surveying woodland or different habitats.

And I'd recommend them wholeheartedly. I've been using them now for several years.  Now, another tip I would give recorders is to wear soft clothing, quiet clothing in the field. And what I mean by this is avoid anything noisy like raincoats that rustle and make noise. Fleece clothing is much better.

Fleece jackets and that type of thing. They're very soft. They don't make any noise. And there's nothing worse than getting back to your desktop at the end of the day and realizing there's just some noise pollution that you have actually caused yourself with clothing in the recordings. So wear soft clothing. 

Another tip that may sound very obvious is get organized. So For example, whenever I get out into the field, my kit bag is the same every single time I check it carefully before I go out. So I have all of my leads, my recorders and microphones generally in the same place in the bag every single time I go out.

And I find this especially helpful at night. I'm fastidious about this, especially out in the field. When I'm finished recording something, I make sure everything goes back in the exact same position. I'm very careful about not leaving stuff out in the field. I've learned just the hard way over the years.

It's so easy just to leave something down or even just leave something at home. And there's nothing worse than traveling a long way to a certain location to record a certain species and realizing you've left a vital lead or piece of equipment at home. It just ruins your day. Sometimes you have another piece of equipment you can use if you're lucky, but something as simple as forgetting a memory card.

I've done this several times, just taking a memory card out to download onto a computer. And then I have not put it back into my recorder. So when I've got out into the field, I've realized I've no SD card in my recorder. I can't record anything. And it's absolutely crushing after making the effort to get out maybe at sort of five o'clock in the morning to a lovely bit of woodland.

There's birds everywhere and you can't record anything. So be fastidious and be organized. 

Now a vital tip is get away from noise wherever possible. So the most obvious way of doing this is to get out of cities and get into quiet areas in the middle of nowhere with just as little human activity as possible. If you can do that,  if you can't do that, there are other ways around this. You can get out in the middle of the night.

Maybe I find between one o'clock in the morning and seven o'clock in the morning, the absolute best time. You'd be very surprised, even in relatively urban areas, how quiet things are. during those hours. So that's another way of doing it. Get out at the right times when there's very few people around.  It really does make a huge difference to your recordings not to have traffic, airplane noise and dogs, all kinds of sources of anthropogenic noise.

You can just avoid them completely by getting out at night quite often. And I would recommend that wholeheartedly. I've been doing that all year this year and the results have been fantastic. So avoid noise wherever possible.  Now lastly, I will talk a little bit about field craft. Just think about where you are in the field, what you're doing and how you approach certain birds.

It's always better to be patient basically. So sit back initially, just check out things, what's going on, where is the subject spending the most time? Is it returning to the same perch over and over again? If it's a wader. Is it frequenting the same pool? You know, you just need to watch and sit back and get used to the habits of the birds, and that will save you an incredible amount of time.

You can't just randomly place the microphone and hope for the bird just to fly up beside it and start singing. That just doesn't happen. So field craft is very, very important. Again, clothing is important. Kind of wear dull colors, greens, grays, that type of thing. Don't stand out too much. Does, you know.

Nothing worse to you than wearing, say, a bright red jumper and expecting that shy species aren't going to notice you in the field. Use cover, move around quietly, don't make much noise. It's all pretty obvious stuff. But you'd be quite surprised actually sometimes by the way people approach birds. And they just frighten them off and then, you know, you've no hope of getting a recording. 

So field craft is very important. Just sit back, scope out your subject, Quietly get your microphone into the best position that you think is possible, and then just sit back and be patient. It can take an hour or two to get a really nice recording sometimes, so that's what it takes, that's what you do.

And really it's quite nice just to sit out in the field sometimes, and do a bit of board watching while you're waiting for something to just move in and start singing beside your microphones.  Now lastly, enjoy your time in the field. Quite often, I just get out, you know, into certain habitats. I might have a couple of target species in mind.

But generally speaking, when I get out into the field,  I'm kind of judging things as I find them. So if I arrive on site, say, in the middle of the night, and I realise there's a few thrush nightingales singing from a copse, I'll go and concentrate on that first. And quite often from there, I'll just go to the next thing that I hear naturally, say a sedge warbler, that'll lead on to the next thing, and so on and so forth.

And really, it's so enjoyable just to sound record in that way, you never know where the session's going to lead you, and it can be quite wonderful just to kind of move around a large area like a reserve. Like that, getting a lot of lovely recordings and it can be very productive as well. You can come away with 15 or 20 really good quality recordings in that manner.

So basically just take advantage of what's singing and what's vocalizing while you're in the field, while you're there. It sounds very, very obvious, but sometimes if you get too kind of tunnel visioned on one species, you just, you don't notice anything around yourself. So you skip all these wonderful, wonderful singing species that are all around you.

So. Things like Blackbirds, Robins, Greenfinches, Songthrush. Stop and record them all. If anything is singing well, just get a mic up beside it. Record it and move along. Now sometimes I understand you will want to record a certain species for whatever reason. I spent a lot of time recording Black Woodpecker this year.

I put a lot of effort in for that. But these things, these projects can take a very, very long time. For example, I've been trying to record Black Throated Diver for the last three years. And I still haven't got the recording I really want, the recording I kind of envision in my head. So sometimes these things take a very, very long time and that's fine with me.

So like I say, enjoy your time in the field. It's wonderful to be out there, especially at night and in the small hours of the morning. And it's kind of a process I really, really enjoy. So let the boards dictate what's going on. Record whatever you find as you go along and just enjoy your time.  Now,  also, I'm going to circle back on equipment.

Don't worry about your equipment. Whatever you have in your bag, just get to know it and get to know how it works. Get used to it and use it to the best of your ability. Like I say, even simple recorders and microphones can get you excellent recordings if you use them in the right way. Naturally, if you can afford a really nice microphone, something like a shotgun microphone, something like a Sennheiser MK 600, it'll greatly improve your recordings with a small handheld recorder.

And Pravala or something better, go out there and get that. But there's no substitute folks for good field craft, taking your time, getting out onto the field. At the right times, getting out into good areas, good reserves with lots of species and really then the world is your oyster. Just enjoy your field recording and that's the best advice really I can give beginners.

Just get out there, learn your songs, learn your sounds and enjoy yourself. If you get out often enough after no time at all, you're going to start picking up lots of knowledge. You're going to learn songs very, very quickly and enjoy the process. I know I did.  opens up to you when you start field recording.

You start to notice little things you never noticed before. And the learning process, folks, it just never, never stops. There's so much to learn out there. And there's so many nuances to sound recording boards in the field. It's very, very enjoyable. So that's the last thing I would say. Just get out there, learn and enjoy yourselves.

So I hope this has been useful. And I hope it's gone some way to answering a question that really you could talk for days about really. But the basics are quite simple. Get out into the field. Try and work on your field craft. Get your mic as close as possible to the birds. Wear sensible clothing. And that's about it.

Enjoy your time in the field.  So that's that for now. That's just a few of my thoughts on field recording technique,  and I hope it helps. 

 Once again, a belated welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics. This is episode five of the second season of the podcast, and it has been wonderful so far. I'd like to thank you all for your feedback and emails. It's been very, very encouraging, and it's nice to see that the podcast is being well received. Now, the previous were my thoughts on field recording in answer to a question by one of our subscribers.

And I hope that provides just a little bit of insight into my personal process as regards field recording. Of course, it will vary from person to person, depending on what kind of gear you have, where you live and what you're actually interested in. But that's just my personal process.

 Now I think it's fair to say that's all pretty much self explanatory so far and we're going to dive into our main sound magazine for the episode and this is the call of coastal woodland. Now when I say coastal woodland I mean coastal areas that I visit quite regularly here in Sweden in spring and these are quite incredible habitats and the range of species is quite simply stunning.

I won't actually get into too much detail about the sound magazine. I'm just going to play it for you.  Now in the following sound magazine, the audio was recorded with Sennheiser 8020 match stereo microphones. They've been absolutely incredible, especially on these nocturnal trips. So for a lot of these trips, I get out about midnight. I'm there early in the morning, right through Don Cordes, and it's quite incredible just to be out in the field at this time.

There's very little noise, there's very few people, and the results have been absolutely wonderful. I'm gonna share that with you now. This is the call of coastal woodlands.  Have a listen, folks. 

  Welcome to another soundscape here at Wild Bird Acoustics. We're going to start you off with a wonderfully understated soundscape from coastal meadows here in Sweden in early May. Now there's a lot of species here but have a listen out for Meadow Pipitonsong, just displaying either offshore, Common Gold Calling, Barnacle Goose in the distance, Distant Tree Pipitonsong, Lapwing just waking up over the meadows, Redshank beginning to display, There's magpie calling, there's some noise calling common crane here, just as the sun begins to rise.

Chaffinch, ring plover, herring gull, calling common snipe. Singing chaffinch, calling black headed gull, and the soothing sound of ward pigeon. Chaffinch sounds. 

Oh, Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh 

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! uhm Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop, Stop! Stop! Uh huh. Yeah. 

So, there you go, that's five minutes of the world waking up at Sandamar Reserve in Sweden. It's a wonderful recording and it's always wonderful to be able to be out as the sun comes up and the local birdlife just begins to kind of display. And quite often, it suddenly just bursts into life. Now, I have another recording for you of a very common species, common blackbird.

And common species should not be overlooked. In this recording, you're going to hear a common blackbird, as I say, in the woodlands. And behind it, you can hear a great spotted woodpecker feeding away quietly in the woodlands. Also, in the background, you can hear the aerial display of common snipe. A little bit of distant cuckoo song, and once again the soothing song of wood pigeon just echoing through the woodland. 

Uh, Uh, Uh, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Now, a very common species, but still some of these species are wonderful singers and they make wonderful recordings for the field recorder. And another very, very typical species all over Europe is willow warbler. It's a very nice mellow song and I absolutely love it. And every year when these birds get back, I make an effort to record them.

Now in the background here, it's quite a nice backdrop. Some lovely sounds here. You've got singing garden warbler just fluting away in the background. Again, there's a feeding great spotted woodpecker here. And overhead, there's common snipe in display.  There's singing chaffinch here as well. Very common species here in Sweden.

It's calling common gull in the distance. And also, once again, the song of wren, just echoing through the woodland here at Sandemeyer Reserve where this was recorded. So this is another wonderful recording. This is a singing will o warbler. Probably not too long back on territory at Sandamar Reserve in Sweden. 

Now I am gonna take you back to the dawn period on the coastal meadows that you heard earlier. And one of the species that was present in the area was common crayon, a single pair of birds, and I knew these birds would probably begin to display just after the sun has risen. They do this habitually every morning, and it's called the dawn display.

And it's an absolutely wonderful sound, and for me it's one of the iconic sounds of the wilderness here in Sweden. It's just a beautiful trumpeting call, and I'm going to play a short recording now of that call. I managed to get it that morning after a bit of effort. And it's just something I bumped into continually over the spring of 2024,  but I never tire of hearing it or indeed sound recording it. 

So I'll play that for you now. This is the dawn display of common crane. 

Now by early May here in Sweden, a lot of birds have returned to the woodlands and they're singing away furiously. And one of the birds I really enjoy recording is blackcap.  Now Eurasian blackcap is a very common species once again, but it's a beautiful songster. And I just enjoy recording the species.

It's quite difficult here in Sweden sometimes to separate from garden warbler, but if you listen carefully you can usually manage to do so, just with a little bit of care. Now this is as much about the woodland soundscape as it is about blackcap singing, and there's a wonderful backdrop here, amongst other things is roe deer barking and giving grunts in the background, and it makes for a fantastic backdrop.

But also, if you listen carefully here folks, you will hear the song of willow warbler. wood warbler, the soothing calls once again of wood pigeon, wren singing in the background, distant grey legged goose, calling nuthatch, and again, great spotted woodpecker. So although you could actually describe this as a soundscape, the main subject here is in fact Eurasian blackcap.

So we'll have a listen to that now folks. Enjoy this. 

Yeah. Mhm Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

I'm going to play a little bit of the music. 

Uh, 

I'm 

going to be 

Now, coastal woodland here in Sweden is a very, very exciting habitat.  You never know what you're going to come across, especially in the period of kind of May and late April. When birds can be passing through. But for me, one of the most beautiful songs of the summer here in Sweden is next. It's the song of wood warbler.

And it's just an incredibly evocative sound. I absolutely love it. It just gives me the tingles. So you're going to hear the kind of shivering song. The descending song of wood warbler. Some lovely chew descending notes here as well. Typical of these species. And once again, there's so much going on in the background.

This was recorded at Sverdsnast Víkon and it's a wonderful patch of woodland near some coastal meadow. So in the background here you're going to hear singing wren, robin, wood pigeon, there's a blackcap, calling nuthatch, there's also garden warbler, red shank, reylag goose, distant yellowhammer, there's a calling blackcap at one point towards the end, and so much more. 

Have a listen to this, this is a wonderful atmospheric soundscape from Sverdsnast Víkon. And this is wood warbler here in sweep. 

I'm going to 

show you a little bit of what's going on here. 

Next up is also a very common species in coastal woodland here in Sweden in May and that is European Pied Flycatcher.  Now I was absolutely thrilled with this recording when I got home and listened to it through the headphones. I knew in the field it could be a little bit special. The mics were quite close to the board and there was a lot going on in the background that I wanted to capture.

And once again, the Sennheiser microphones just did the business and it made for a quite amazing recording. I'm going to share that with you now. So this is an adult male European Pied Flycatcher. It wasn't a second calendar male and that always makes for a richer song. It's quite a wonderful recording of that species.

But the amazing thing about this recording really is the background. There's so many species in here. You've got Common Snipe overhead in display, also the call of Common Snipe. You've got a singing Yellowhammer. There's distant Common Sandpiper calling at one point near the start. Hooded Crow. Chaffinch.

Wood Pigeon. There's a drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker calling Common Gull. Blue Tits giving call. There's a singing Greenfinch. Meadow Pippet. The call of Common Nuthatch. There's a Lesser White Throat in song. In the background throughout, you're going to hear the wingbeats of Mute Swans in dispute.

Pairing Golden Call, Distant Common Crane, Redshank and Willow Orbler, and then towards the end a pair of Nest Prospecting, Goosander, Overfly the Microphone. All within this short recording, which is about four and a half minutes long.  This is European Pied Flycatcher, a quite wonderful, soothing recording.

I'll play that for you now. 

Bim, boing, bing, 

bing Um,  Okay. the the the the the  Um, Um, Uh, Um, Um, Um, Um, 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  LILY 

OF THE VALKYRIE Um, uh, Um, uh, Um, uh, Um, uh, Um, uh, 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now please leave your objections for passed separation. 

A classic species of coastal woodland here in Sweden next, and that is tree pippet. Now tree pippet are probably going to feature quite prominently in season two. It's a species I repeatedly ran into when I was out field recording, and it's not a species I can easily pass when I'm out in the fields.  It has a wonderful song, and in the background there were displaying Common Snipe, Red Shank, once again some displaying Eider, Barnacle Goose, the calls of Nuthatch, some Black headed Gullcall, Distant Wren, Blue Tit.

And even about 30 seconds before the end, the distant calls of a black woodpecker.  This is Tree Pippet at Hogarn in Sandamar Reserve on the 11th of May 2024. 

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, 

yeah.  Um, uh, um, uh, Um, uh, um, Um, um, um, Um, um, um, 

Now, also at Hogarn, on that particular day, was a wonderful common white throat. And, once again, I was able to get the microphones very, very close and get a nice recording.  In the background, once again, there's a lovely woodland backdrop. There's some great spotted woodpecker drumming, as well as some singing tree pipit.

And, once again, the meadow sounds kind of filter in there with displaying common red shank in the background.  Also nice to have in the background, always, is the soothing song of common wood pigeon in the woodlands. So this is quite a nice short recording of a common white throat in full song,  just on the edge of the woodland in some short scrub there, and we'll play that for you now. 

Now the last recording for you in this sound magazine and it's of two species really, lesser white throat and tree pippet once again. Now, one of the things I love about Coastal Woodland is just getting sounds of species that you wouldn't necessarily expect to record right beside each other. So for example here, there's some lovely audio in the background here of some displaying hydra, and it just makes a lovely backdrop to have against singing lesser white throat and tree pivot.

So I love these kind of coastal areas for that reason. Also in the background here, you have overhead display of common snipe, as well as the calling display of that species. There's also the call of Treepip, as birds go over on migration. It's still early May at this stage. There's calling Black Headed Ghoul.

And in the distance, on the meadows, the calls of Common Redshank. So, once again, this is a lovely recording. It's recorded with the Sennheiser Array. And I'm going to let this play out now.  This is Lesser White Throat and Tree Pippet Calling at Hoggarn in Sandemare, Sweden on the 11th of May, 2024. 

Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yes, okay. Such okay. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. 

So there you go, that's a lovely selection of audio all from coastal woodland areas in Sweden here in early May. It was all recorded between the 10th and 20th of May 2024 and  all of the recordings you heard were made with Sennheiser.  8020 stereo matched microphones. It's a quite wonderful time of the year to be out and I've very much enjoyed, as I say, using that stereo array just to capture these incredibly clear soundscapes and songs of the local species.

It's almost like getting a brand new pair of binoculars when you're a teenager. You just want to get out and see everything again. And I found with the new recording array with the Sennheiser mics, that I just want to get out and record absolutely everything. It was almost like starting again and hearing the world through no ears.

It's been a wonderful experience this spring. In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed this sound magazine. The audio I think is of pretty high quality and I think very relaxing and soothing. So that's it for me, your host Alan Dalton here at Wild Bird Acoustics. Once again, thanks to all the listeners for tuning in to listen. 

 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.