An Interview with Magnus Robb

In this episode, the second interview of the season, I was delighted to welcome Magnus Robb to Wild Bird Acoustics. As a member of 'The Sound Approach to Birding' team, Magnus Robb will need little introduction to many of the podcasts listeners. Magnus is widely respected as prolific field recorder of birds and has traveled very widely in his capacity as member of the Sound Approach team over the past twenty years or more. In this respect, he brings a vast wealth of knowledge and expertise to any conversation involving bird vocalizations. In this interview, Magnus discusses various aspects of his experiences with field recording birds, his work with the Sound Approach team and kindly shares some remarkable audio from some of the most remote corners of the world.

Transcript

 You are 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 you're all very welcome to Wild Bird Acoustics. Once again, I'm your host, Alan Dalton,   📍 and you join me at the halfway point of season two. 

 Now I have an interview for you in this episode. It's an incredible interview. It's quite long and I'm not gonna keep you too long in this opening section. Suffice to say that since the podcast began, I have mulled over the possibility of hopefully getting a member of the sound approach crew onto the podcast for a conversation, and I was absolutely delighted.

When Magnus Rob agreed to give an interview to Wild Bird Acoustics. 

Now the sound approach team is comprised of Mark Constantine, Magnus Robb, Killian Mullarney, Dick Forsman, Arnold Van Der Berg, and Rene Pop.   Now, all of the members are extremely interested in bird vocalizations as you can imagine.  But you could say they also have their own niche within the group.

For example, Killian is a very well known and incredible bird artist.  Rene Pop is a fantastic photographer, so is Arnoud in actual fact, Mark is an incredible organizer. He's an incredible field recorder. He's extremely knowledgeable on bird calls . And then of course you have Magnus Robb, who was a field recorder  and  an incredibly knowledgeable person  on bird vocalizations in general.

Arnoud Van der Berg himself is an incredible field recorder and has done an incredible amount of pioneering work,  especially in places like Morocco and North Africa.

 Dick Forsman himself is a world renowned expert on Raptor identification and also an avid field recorder.

 So first and foremost, it's very striking to me that the sound approach guys are very much a team 

 it's quite remarkable how well these  people work together within the sound approach. And the results are there for all to see. They now have several books under their belt.  And also there is a wonderful resource online, the Sound Approach website,  which has all kinds of articles and useful information.

And you'll find that online simply by Googling 'The Sound Approach to Birds'. Now, without any further ado, I'm gonna get stuck into the interview. It's quite long, but it's incredibly interesting. And towards the end, Magnus is gonna share some absolutely incredible audio with you, the listeners have a listen.

Folks, this is an interview with Magnus Robb.

 Now welcome everybody to Wild Bird Acoustics. Once again, it's the second interview of the second season. We have a fantastic guest lined up for you. I think most listeners will be familiar with the guest. He is a prolific field recorder of birds and a member of the sound approach. Team Magnus. Rob, you're very welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much, Alan. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah, it's great to have you on and thanks for coming on. So I think Magnus, I'm gonna skip the formalities of the questions like, you know, how did you get involved with birding in the first place and all that kind of stuff. But I was quite interested in, I believe you have a musical background.

And my question, my first question to you would be, do you think that was a factor in becoming acutely interested in bird vocalizations? Were, were you interested in the birds before the music or which came first more or less? Actually it was the birds that came first. So when I was a, a child, um, my mother came from the ney island, so we used to go, we used to go north for our holidays from Edinburgh, used to go up to the ese and uh, and there, there's birds everywhere.

I mean, it was, I grew up seeing sea birds at close range, avoiding being spattered by full Mars. And, and. Seeing hen harriers and short yeared owls over the place, the old Maryland. And so, although that was only a few weeks a year, it made a huge, uh, mark on me. And I became very interested in birds. It would be, you know, if we were driving around the islands, my, my mother and father had enough interest in birds that if we passed a lock, we would stop and, and see what was on it.

And if there was a marsh along beside the lock, we'd, you know, we'd stop to have a look and see if there was a short tear row. So I, I, I ca I had, it was natural that I would develop an interest because I was exposed a lot to, to birds. Mm-hmm. Um, and then the, I started playing violin, age six. Um, and then music was always a part of my childhood from then on.

And then when I was a teenager, I got into playing in youth orchestras. And then I, more or less, at the age of 15 ish, I discovered I had some ability to compose music. Which I was kind of surprised about because nobody had ever suggested it to me. Mm-hmm. But anyway, I started composing music and then very soon that became my major interest.

So playing music, composing music, and, uh, at this point in my adolescence, I suppose I, I, I never lost interest in birds in nature, but it wasn't central for, for a while. Okay. And then it, it began to become central again in my late teens. Uh, or at least actually to tell the truth. I became more interested in whales and dolphins and their sounds for a while than, than in birds.

But there wasn't really a way of, of getting any hands-on experience with that at that age. Yeah. So that was an interest, that was a dead end because I just wouldn't be able to do anything with it. And, and then I got, at some point I realized that if you. I think it was on a radio program once, if you take a humpback whale song, which is what interested me at the time.

Mm-hmm. And slow and speed it up. I think it was 16 times. It sounds an awful lot like a song, thrush. So then I began to realize, well actually I could be studying sounds of birds, which are all around me and I don't need to, you know, there's, there's not the logistic challenge that you would have to have.

No. If you wanted to study widder dolphin sounds. So anyway, then my, my interest gradually moved over to bird sounds, but it was only, I only really became a birder in the, the usual sense of the word in my, from 20 age 24 onwards. So relatively late, I suppose, compared to many people. Yeah. And then it all, yeah, sound approach was when I was roughly 30 from there.

So it was more or less in your mid twenties that you began to actively field record words. Yes. So the first microphone I ever had was a, like one of these ones you put on your lapel. And I think I bought it from, you know, for like a tenor or something. Yeah, no, I, it came with a cheap Sony Walkman. That's what it was.

It came with it. So then I, I realized that I could get more power outta that if I find, if I got myself a secondhand television dish. A satellite dish. Yep. A small one. And if I put the microphone in the focus, that would, that would get a better signal. That worked. It was extremely clunky. Like if it touched a twig, you would hear a clang.

Yeah. It was terrible from that point of view, but it did work. And I made my first Crossbo recordings with that. And then I got a tinga after a couple of years, I got a tinga, a mono tinga parabolic microphone. Yeah. In 1997. And that was when I started making more decent quality recordings. Yeah. And, and these days most listen, are quite interested in what kind of equipment people use.

What kind of equipment are you using these days for both active and passive recording. Well, I would say that I have three main options now. Um, one of them, so for opportunistic recording, say when I'm going birding, I'm not entirely sure what I'm gonna find. I'll generally be out with a, a, a tinga stereo linga, parabolic, parabolic microphone.

Um, hanging from a strap on my backpack, small backpack, and a sound device is mixed. Pre three, I, I have an old, the first generation and I just got hold from the second generation. So I, I, those are my preferred recorders just now. Yeah, so that would be opportunistic point and shoot recording. Then I've got what I, what I really like to do whenever possible is to plan a recording, to anticipate something that's gonna happen and put a set of gear in place to get it without me in influencing the, the, the scene too much.

So for that, I have two options. One of them is a wildlife acoustics SM four. Of which I'm fortunate to have several available thanks to the sound approach. So I use that, I use those quite a lot. And one advantage of them is that can have two or three of them out in different places at the same time, I'm quite happy with the quality of those, but for the, you know, if I really want to get the best possible quality I can get, my preference is to use a SaaS stereo Ambulance sampling system is like a binal thing.

It's a box. We've described it in the sound approach to burning, and that has two omni stereo mics in it, for which I normally use Sennheiser, MKH twenties, or M-K-H-M-K-H 80 twenties. Yeah. So high quality Omnis in a binaural setting. So that's my favorite. Yeah. If whenever possible, I like to use that. Yeah.

So in, in a sense that wouldn't really be passive recording you, you kind of staked outboard or washed it for a while and could, you would leave that down maybe overnight or something like that? Uh, it can be anywhere on the scale from very specific targeted recording. Yeah, to, to passive. Let's see what flies over here.

Recording. Yeah. There's an entire scale in between the two. Quite often I target something and then the really exciting recording that comes outta it is something I didn't have in mind at all. Yeah. I mean, as you know from your own work, yeah, it's quite a nice way to record sometimes just find a nice bit of habitat and put a recorder down and see what happens.

I quite enjoy that as well. Yeah. We'll move on to the sound approach. Magnus. I'm sure most listeners will be aware of the sound approach. You've already published several fantastic books and you have a new book. I'm not sure exactly when the release date is, but it's on Waiters and the waiter complex. Is that near in completion or is there a lease date?

Uh, well, I should say that, uh, there's actually likely to be another book coming out before that one. Okay. For sure. There will be another one, which is the second addition to the sign approach to burning. Okay. We can talk about that one at greater length if you like, but to answer the question about the the waiter guide.

No, we don't have a, we don't have a, a clear date for when it's gonna be finished. I've actually been taking a break from working on it for the last, most of the last year because of working on the second edition of the sound approach to birding. But I'm always working on the back in, in the background.

But I would say it's actually likely to come out in, in, in parts. It's become a, it's become really big, it's kind of developed into a monster of sorts, has it? Exactly. It's like 80 plus species and the kind of level of detail that we're working in. I mean, I want it to be useful and comprehensive to the point of, of covering the main sounds that you're likely to hear from a given weather there, but not to the point of being absolutely exhaustive.

So we don't have. You know, I'm kind of going to an extreme here, but we don't have the sounds of chicks calling from inside the egg for every species, but we do have it for one. Okay, very good. No, so it's, it's more like, it is very much focused on what you're most likely to hear. Yeah. Uh, and with the odd bit of more intimate close to the nest sounds if we have them.

Yeah. And if they're, if they seem relevant, but that means that there's an average of between eight and 15 recordings per species and it's often very hard to narrow it down. So I was trying to make a playlist for you raising curly the other day, and I had a job getting it below 25. Yeah. It's extremely difficult with these weathers.

There's so, there's so many different calls and so many variations as well. Exactly. So I mean, I, I will try hard, I mean, it will, it will be down to 15 or so or less. Um, but just, it's just to give you an idea of the, the, it, it is a big project, something I've absolutely loved working on and continue to love working on.

So. It's a, it is definitely a labor of love. Also from, from Killian. I mean, it's a teamwork. The plates are, Killian has been working on these for a long, long time, also with Richard Johnson, so that goes back many years. Yeah. Um, so it, it's, you know, it's a long, long ongoing thing. So hopefully to get back to your question, hopefully in less than two years you might be seeing the first published fruit, so that, but we'll see.

Yeah. I'll stay on the waiter book just for a minute. Logistically, of course, it must have been a huge undertaken. Can you tell us a little about some of the locations the team had to travel to in pursuit of some of the more difficult wider species? It's such a big family and they're so often breeding in very, very remote areas too.

Yeah, no, of course. There's been some absolutely amazing trips involved in this, but to name a few of the most interesting places, so I've been to Arctic Canada twice. Recording signs for this, no, Arctic Canada, once lower level Canada, another time. Killian was in Alaska last year, and he's been in Mongolia.

We've been in Kenya, uh, to get to grips of some of the African species that stretch into the Western poly Arctic. Yeah. A long, long time ago, before we, we knew we were going to do this guide, I had the opportunity to go to the Laina Delta in Northern Siberia. So there's recordings from there too. And we've been, it's not all as, as exotic as that.

There's plenty of recording to be done right here in Portugal where I live. Mm-hmm. Um, and in, in Holland, in the uk, um, and elsewhere in Europe. So of course, it's not all, uh, very, very long journeys, but possibly the most exciting journey of all was a journey to Australia. Which was a chance to get to grips with some species that I had never seen or heard and had been, you know, which are important for the guys.

So things like, um, oriental prat and coal and uh, little ew and some other species that are easier to record there than, than elsewhere. Yeah. Things like, I know some of the sand lovers and so on must have been an incredible site. Some of the, I know some of the sites is around Broome and places, like, there's just massive numbers of waders there.

It must have been quite incredible to be there. Oh, Broome was just paradise, I mean. Mm-hmm. There were, yeah, 20 something species of waiters, I think, I can't remember exactly. Just incredible numbers and diversity and, uh, yeah. Very, very exciting to be there. Yeah, it was really thrilling. I, I think it's fair to say that it's going to be more than just the comprehensive sound guide to waiters.

I was lucky enough to see if you had played since Scotland last year. Oh yeah. And they're quite, they're quite incredible. So it seems to me that this book is going to be. Very much an identification tone on the way. There's a very, very comprehensive guide all round. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, the focus is on identification, not to the exclusion of everything else, but mm-hmm.

Uh, our guiding motivation is really to, to bring new insights to identification, both visual and by ear. Yeah. I think it's fair to say I can't wait for that one. When it does, eventually it's gonna be great. Well, I can't wait to see it appear, although I'll probably, I'll have some sort of empty nest syndrome when we're done with it, you know, until, until I'm fully, fully charged up doing something else.

A cheeky question, what kind of stuff is the sound approach kinda looking at it in the future? Covering any ideas or, it is probably all very far away. Yeah. Plenty of ideas. Nothing concrete, not even concrete things that I'm hiding from you. It's really, we're so focused on, on what we're doing just now.

You know, there's various things that have come up over the time, like, it would be nice to do this, it would be nice to do that. I mean, rails for example, is a very audio subject. Mm-hmm. Uh, because you hear them far more often than, than you see them. Or Swifts, I'm crazy about Swifts. Yeah. Or Raptors. We've got quite a good selection of raptors.

But I mean, when we started the sound approach, our initial aim was to produce a collection of Western poly aortic bird sounds as some kind of a guide for, for the lot. Mm-hmm. And every time we sit down and think about how are we gonna do that, then it always seems just, you know, so daunting that Yeah.

Just, but I think it will eventually happen. You'll get there eventually. And that's more or less the long term aim. Is it just to kind of get as much basically as done as you can in all the species? Yeah, I mean, we still try to, we we're, you know, I might be going somewhere with a, with waders in mind, but I'll certainly try and, you know, if there's an opportunity to fill a few gaps in our Western Poly Arctic collection, I'll always take that chance as well.

Now Amman El was an incredible discovery in 2013, you were instrumental in that, but closer to home, would you consider that sound recording is the most likely route to uncovering species that have either been hiding in plain sight? I'm just thinking of the example, maybe a plain swift, which was discovered breeding in Portugal in 2019.

Yes. I mean, cryptic species do pop up here and there and I mean, in Western Europe, the chances of of an entirely new cryptic species are, are very, very low. Yeah. But who knows? It's not completely the question, but certainly discovering breeding populations of things that are in unexpected places, that's It's possible.

Yeah. And the playing swift. Indeed. That was a, a great example. What happened there was, as a friend of mine who I didn't know at the time, but I've got to know, well, in the meantime, Paul Paulo Beo, he's a, a birder who lives in the north of Portugal and he, I. Goes to Porta quite often 'cause his daughters were studying there.

Some of them I think still are, but he was going to porta quite often to see them in the weekends. And he would go to one of the parks for some birding. And he was seeing now and then he was seeing Swifts in November, December. And he is, he's a very perceptive observer and interestingly he's a paraglider.

So he's somebody who he understands very well how birds fly and, and also which part the sky they're likely to be in. He can see. Mm-hmm He can see an inverted columnist, thermals that a normal person wouldn't, wouldn't dream that we're there even without any birds in him. He can just look at the landscape and know where the birds are gonna be at any given time.

So he's a natural person to study birds in flight. Also, I think he probably wouldn't mind me telling you that I think he's colorblind, so he's more focused on gz and shapes. Then he is on, on the finer details of shades of color in plumage. Mm-hmm. Anyway, um, Paolo uh, started to suspect that the, the Swifts that he was seeing in November could be playing Swifts.

Yeah. And this was entirely at the time, this was entirely based on visual stuff, Viji, and they looked small. And also the fact that what, what were they doing there in late November? Yeah. It's outta a season. And at a certain point he made this public, and I think it's fair to say most people were very skeptical.

Um, and, uh, the burden community is perhaps more concentrated. Well, there's people burning all over the country, but it's perhaps most concentrated in Lisbon and further south. And it's, you know, it's a couple of hours drive away. So it took a little while before people started going and checking this out.

I mean, a question of. Weeks, I think, anyway, at certain points. Uh, somebody sent me a sound recording of it and as soon as I heard the recording, 'cause I'd had the experience of listening to the playing Swifts in Madeira years ago. Mm-hmm. And I could, I could hear from the sound recording. He's right. Yeah.

Paul was right. And anyway, it turned out that indeed there was a colony of a small colony of, of plain Swifts in Porto. And then Paolo discovered a second colony, a smaller, a tiny colony, like two or three pairs or something at a different location in Porto. Um, and then with Paolo's encouragement, I checked out some outta season Swift's observations in, in Lisbon near the, this big hospital in the middle of Lisbon, where people were seeing Swift's also in November, December.

So I went and checked that out and, and indeed they were playing swift from the, from the, the visual and the sounds They were playing Swifts. Yeah. And then since then we've discovered them. In another town, Kasai not far from Lisbon, where this seems to be possibly the highest concentration so far with two confirmed nesting spots a few hundred meters apart.

Okay. I was, I I was actually there this afternoon. Um, and so almost certainly there's more places, um, yeah. In along the Portuguese coast, there's been observations up in Spain now, uh, in, uh, I think Gia and Urus. Yeah. It's, it's quite remarkable sometimes once the lid is lifted on these things, you know, it just, yeah.

People just become aware and this is, this is very much, although, well, basically I can, I know what I'm looking for visually with playing swifts smaller, more erratic flight and so on, but I really don't trust my observation until I hear them. Yeah. Uh, for me, the, the sound is instant recognition. Mm-hmm. Um, they're very high pitched.

It's quite a long. Scream and it's sort of, it's, it has an inflection at the end. So it's like if I was to slow it down and, and just to give you a sense of the shape, it's do, do, but it's very, very high pitched. Yeah. Uh, but it's that inflection at the end, that's the big giveaway, uh, together with the fight.

Very hard pitch. So yeah, I, when I hear one, it's uh, you know, I can recognize it straight away. Yeah. And in fact, when I, when I, when I discovered the, the calling in, in Kaska, I was actually, I'd gone to meet some friends there, not for birding, just for something else. Yeah. And I was a bit early and I had to make, I had to make a phone call.

It was a, a kind of a stressful conversation I was gonna have to have with a lawyer about something. And, uh, so I was talking to this lawyer and, and it wasn't that stressful after all, but I'd been very nervous about making this call. And, um, and then as I was sitting there, it was a hot day. I had the window open.

And, uh, and as I was sitting talking to this lawyer, I could hear playing Swifts outside and I was like having this important talk and I was just wanting to break it off and jump out and look at the plane Swift. But anyway, concentration gone. They were still there when the conversation ended. So seeking out and recording various pieces, you must end up in some bizarre locations with un unforeseen circumstances.

And it must lead to some very funny moments. Does it? It does. And you know, there's so many stories, I dunno where to start, but there's one, there's one that some people will know about because it, it, the first, our first book, the Sun approached the birding ends with that one, which was, I was in, I was in Turkey and Beji mm-hmm.

Where there's a wadi, uh, that's very good for all kinds of birds. And I was there, I was walking, I walked up this wadi for some distance and there was a mini trees warbler singing on top of a little cliff. Cliff may be 15 meters high or something. Okay. And, and it was beautifully quiet. I think I was just used my, my parabolic microphone.

I was pointing it up there according to this bird. And I was standing maybe, maybe three, four meters from the bottom of the cliff. Mm-hmm. And I heard a little, little crack thought, nothing of it. And then a two meter section of the cliff fell off and landed at my feet. Oh God, Lord. So in the recording you hear, you hear the great big crash.

You hear me saying, geez, something like that, you know, um, mild swearing and uh, and then you hear a keel going, going crazy in, in the distance. And then the, the ministries war were, carry us on singing. So I carry on recording. Of course. Of course you do. Meanwhile my heart was going, but that was very, very, very nearly the end of me.

Okay. Well, but yeah, no, there's plenty of other stories. Scrapes. Yeah. Just naturally travel, display to these things, I suppose. Yeah. But, um, do you wanna hear another one? Yeah, go ahead. Why not? Okay. While we hair Magnus, there was a, there was a time I was in Turkey again, this was about 20 years ago. And I was in Northern Turkey in a forested area and I didn't have a brilliant map, but I, I, I wanted to drive through this forest.

I was looking for various things. I think some mika's red starts and various other things. Mm-hmm. There was black, supposed to be black fers around, so I was curious to see them and it looked like there was a circular route that I could do and come back to my starting point. It was gonna be a forest track.

So I went into the forest on this nice broad track, but it got narrower and narrower and narrower and it was starting to get quite muddy in places and I was being into think, hmm. Is this really gonna all go all the way around? Or is it going, am I gonna get stuck at some point? So I thought, well, I'd better after a while, I, you know, my good sense got the better of me and I thought, well, I better turn back and go round the one way.

Go back the same way. Yeah. So, but then as I was turning the car, the car got stuck. So the car got stuck. Not facing forwards or backwards, but facing sideways and facing sort of, it was on a slight slope. So I'd slid against the kind of embankments and the front wheel was in some kind of mud. And the, and there was, you know, it looked pretty hopeless, but I, I quickly pulled out all the tricks, you know, digging under the wheels, putting bits of bits, branches and pine cones and goodness knows what, and getting my hands all worn out in the process.

But there was, as it happens, there was the only car that I had seen for several kilometers was parked a short distance away. It was like some kind of. A micro or something like that. Something small. Mm-hmm. It's part not far away. And I thought, well, if I'm stick, you know, if I'm stuck here for much longer, chances are whoever that belongs to will appear.

And sure enough that happened, there was this great big, I'm talking really tall, red-haired Turk came outta the forest carrying a bottle of something other. He was steaming drunk. He took one look at me and he burst into laughter and he, he came over to help me and he was extremely helpful. I, I had a few words of Turkish.

He had zero words of English, but he understood it was pretty obvious what my problem was. And he helped me. And he was fortunate. You know, the good thing about being a strong, being a big, strong guy was that he was, he had me out in no time. I. But because I, I didn't want to get stuck again. I, you know, I didn't stop.

I said thank you with gestures and from the car window, but I didn't park and, and go and have a drink with him. I just, I, I left. But there's one more detail as well that he'd had the misfortune of having a, a throat, um, I dunno exactly what it was, but he'd had, you know, one of those, sometimes when people lose their vocal chords, they have like a patch on their throat that they press mm-hmm.

Yeah. To track you. Yeah. So it, it was something that made the situation just that bit more bizarre. Mm-hmm. Um, anyway, that was, that was, that was one that tickled me quite a lot. I thought you were gonna say he was the only red-haired man in Turkey. Well, there's not that many of them there. I wouldn't have imagine.

So anyway, I was very grateful to him. I can imagine for getting me outta that scrape. Okay. On a more personal level, what species have you been recording this year? Around, just locally in Portugal. What are you enjoying at the moment? Uh, well, to tell you the truth, I've not done a great deal of bird work of recording so far in Portugal this spring because I've been working very hard on projects at home.

But I have been on a couple of nice trips. So I went to, um, Oman on a, a trip in early February that was mainly focused on waiters. Mm-hmm. Uh, and the highlights of that were sociable Lapwing and Pintail Snipe, both of which I didn't feel like I had a good enough grip on to, to write about them properly in the guide.

But, uh, you know, in, in non reading mode, small prat Andal was a lovely thing to come across. Oh, we missed him and o man. You were down around Salala, were you? Yes, and I also missed them on, I mean, I've been to Aman quite a few times and this was the first time I connected with them. Yeah. So there was some lovely op, you know, opportunities for recording there, but it was, it was kind of.

It was not really, I was not there for, how can I put it? It was more species focused than, uh, about collecting gorgeous soundscapes and so on. Yeah. Um, anyway, that was great. I really enjoyed that. And then more recently, I was on a very focused trip to, to Neva in, in Spain to try and get drumming of Milford's Woodpecker.

Okay. This, the, the southern version of White Pack Woodpecker, because in the second addition of the sun porch to bird, we've got a little oscillogram guide to the drumming of all the European woodpecker species. Mm-hmm. And it was bugging me that we didn't have Milford's, so I went there and I got it, but by the skin of my teeth, it was, it was drizzly weather for the entire time I was there.

The sun came out for five minutes in about four days. Mm-hmm. Um, and the woodpecker activity was very low, but by, by dint of having several sets of gear out at the same time and different places, I eventually got something good. Yeah. So generally speaking, I mean, if in in a world where you have plenty of time on your hands, which probably doesn't exist, which species do you enjoy or look forward to return each year, say, in Portugal?

Um, well, Swifts are definitely, you know, I, I love, I mean, they're, compared to some songbirds, their sounds are not that interesting, but I, I just love hearing them. Mm-hmm. They, and I love seeing them. A few years ago, say four years ago, I was living in a, in a house that actually had seven nests of Swifts right underneath the roof, and I was in the top floor so I could hear them scratching above the ceiling.

Uh, and I used to just love seeing them whizzing past the windows. Mm-hmm. At, uh, at dusk every day. Anyway, so Swift's is a, are a major favorite, but I love mimicry. Mimicry is something that fascinates me, so I love listening to Common Red Starts, melodious Warblers, Western Black Heed Wheat Tears. Species that bring back stories of their travels, you know?

Yeah. I can listen to a, I can listen to a common red star in Portugal and hear five species of bee eaters just because the, that's what's in their songs. They've got, you know, they've, they've come back with imitations of, of five species. Yeah. It's remarkable. Yeah. And incidentally, anybody who goes to the trouble of learning the sound of white throated beater, almost every common red start in Europe imitates it sooner or later in its song.

Yeah. It's there. Just listen for it. Yeah. There's so many pieces you have to learn. I was looking at Marsh Warbler last year, so I kind of got into the African recordings quite a bit. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's a lot of work, but I think I'll get there eventually, but I'm just looking forward to maybe trying to tease those apart maybe in the next few years.

It should be interesting. I, I should say that although I've, I've been lucky enough to be to, to go to Sub-Saharan Africa two times. I'm definitely know, know a few African bird signs, but I'm not, uh. You know, so I'm delighted if I can recognize one or two. Mm-hmm. In the, in the mimicry. We'll see. Now what have we got here?

You're extraordinarily well traveled, Magnus, in your pursuits or boards, you're just, you've been everywhere. Do you still have a dream destination to get to in your mind? Ab Yeah, absolutely. I've got several. Yeah. The way it works with me is I, the one, the places I dream about are, are places that are an extension of somewhere I've been already.

Mm-hmm. So rather than dreaming about going to, uh, uh, Brazil, much as, you know, Brazil must be absolutely amazing. Or Columbia with thousands of bird species. Yep. That's not what, what attracts me so much. But going to say Yemen, I mean, having been to Oman and having been to southwestern Saudi Arabia, I would love to go to Yemen, but that's kind of outbounds.

It's when we were in Oman, we drove down to the Yemen border, to the mountains there. Yeah, we were kind of parked quite close to the border, just kind of longing, looking down the road wondering, you know, what is in there. Yeah. Quite incredible. And I think, I think actually there's probably only one species there that's in one endemic that's only available in Yemen and not elsewhere.

And that's the A center. Mm-hmm. All the other ones are either in Southern Oman or, or Saudi Arabia. But still it is just the lure of going to like the ultimate Arabian destination, I think. Yeah. Um, so that's one. Another one would be Iran, which is probably much more doable. Um, but it just, you know, it hasn't happened yet.

Part of the reason I'd love to go to Oman is, sorry, Iran is because of the Oman. Yeah. Uh, to hear them over there as well here and see places like ar arctic destinations for me are, are, are very attractive. So I'd love to go back to the Arctic. I'd love to go back to Arctic Russia, but that's kind of complicated for the time being.

Yeah. But I'd love to go to Alaska at some point in my life. Those, those destinations attract me very much because, well, because I, I love the arctic species that we get turning up here now, and then the waiters of course. And when you get, if you catch an arctic soundscape on in calm weather, which might be a rare event, but if you, if you get it in calm weather, there's nothing more, nothing quite like it.

It's the last wilderness really, isn't it? It's just a, it's a dream for any field recorder just to get into a place like that. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, so that's, you know, definitely a, I'd love to go back to, to the Arctic. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, if I could ever go to the, the far northeast of Russia would be a place I'd love to go to at some point.

Mm-hmm. But can only dream of that for now. Now, before we get into your recordings, which are quite wonderful, and you're in for three folks, I have a general question, which I, I ask actually, of all the guests. And it is, in what ways would you say failed recording has enriched your boarding experiences or your life in general?

Uh, it's a huge question on that work. Yeah. In my case, I mean, I've been in incredibly fortunate that to have the opportunity to work for the sign approach, so it's been, you know, the, it's been my, my work for the last quarter century has been, uh, focused around sound recording birds and writing about them.

So it's been a, a huge part of my life. Mm-hmm. And, and, uh, yeah, but specifically about birding, when I, when I started birding and started sound recording, I was living in Holland at the time. This was late, mid to late nineties, and I went through more a year or two where I was just trying to catch up with everybody else on the common stuff.

Yeah. You know, I'd never seen a, this, you know, I'd never seen. You're gonna sound, you're gonna have a think. It's fun. Funny, but I'd never seen a wood warbler. I'd never seen a nut hatch. We didn't have too many nut hatches in Scotland when I was growing up. There's there, they are there now, but, uh, yeah. Um, so I was catching up on basic stuff.

Also woodpeckers, you know, we only had great spotted and green in Scotland when I was growing up, so all the other ones were exotic. Yeah. But, um, then I, once I got past that, I, I, I very quickly realized that there was a lot of people that are into migration watching. And in Holland, um, it's been popular for decades.

People go to the coast, typically sit on a high June, and on an autumn, autumn day, September, October, uh, watching hundreds if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of, uh, migrants passing, the great majority of which are, are passerines and people. I was seeing people doing that and ident identifying. Them, you know, identifying rare species in among them.

I was thinking, how do they do that? You know, how can they, how can they, how can they be? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I quickly realized that of course there's many borders who, who are very good on that visually and, and the, the flights and so on. But the ones that really impressed me are the ones that really knew their calls.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and having a musical background, I was able to, I had some, you could say I had some tools in my tool chest that, that came in very handy for this. So I had a, perhaps a more, an ability to listen more an analytically than most people, or to, I had ways of remembering sounds or conceptualizing sounds that gave me, um, an advantage.

So I found that I was able to learn those sounds fairly quickly. But what I found especially useful was when I started recording and I started, um. Having no, I'd go for a session of early morning migration, password migration, and I would just lay out my record and start recording, which nowadays, thousands of people do that.

Uh, but I think at the time, very few people had ever done that. And I quickly realized that if anything interesting flew over, I could make a note on the recording and say, you know, what was that 30 seconds ago? And I would look it up later. And it was, it was this feedback from checking things against the few, you know, we had nothing like the, the, the references that we have now, but there was CD sets and so on that, uh, allowed me to check things.

And so I found that that feedback loop of going out, listening to stuff, recording it, checking it later, going out better informed was a, was a very health, it was a very good way to learn. And so that's how sound recording and burning, there's always been a, a very strong dialogue between the two for me.

Yeah. The one enriches the other. Yeah. I, I, I was alluding in a musical question right at the start of the podcast. Do you think your musical abilities have helped you kind of lock in calls, remember calls, listen to intonation, that type of thing? Yes. So, for example, because I was used to reading musical notation and writing scores, it's, in some ways it's a, it's a graph, you know?

Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a kind of coded sonogram. I mean, it's not really that much like a sonogram, but if you think of notes going up or down Yeah. Then you've already, you've got the hang of a sonogram. So, yeah. I was able to hear in shapes. I mean, I would, I would conceptualize a piece of music as a certain shape.

Mm-hmm. Uh, I mean, that would be over a span of 10, 20 minutes or something. I would, I would, could hear the whole thing and, and sort of imagine in a, uh, a, the, the whole piece of music in a certain shape and also in details. Um, I would have the ability to hear something and, and translate that into a, a kind of a squiggle in my head, if you like.

Yeah. And it's only a small step from there to using sonograms. So, so yes, that certainly helped having that, um, that, yeah, different, different approach to, so listening, listening purely by ear is always primary, but being able to translate that into something visual or something, you know, other, other conceptual ways of, of, uh, of, um, yeah, of a locking it basically.

Yeah. Sound details. Yeah. We're gonna go into your sound recordings now, Magnus. I think we have 12 recordings in total. The first one is an Incredible Species Jar Falcon. I basically locked in on that one. I, I went on a recording trip. That's not quite true because I, I, I was hoping that I might have a chance to record Geo Falcon.

I went to to Iceland in. The very early years of the sound approach, I had a number of species in mind that I really wanted to record, and one of them was Geo Falcon. And I, uh, I got myself a, a license from the, the appropriate authority before going there and came in contact with some people who ring geo falcons.

And, uh, anyway, to get a long story short, I, I managed to get to use a hide that a filmmaker named Magnus Magnusson had put up close to a nest 20 meters from a nest in a lava field. And it was just an amazing opportunity that had to be grasped. And, uh, so the way what I, I record, it was recording with the SAS microphone sennheisers.

So it's a, it's an oral stereo, but the amazing thing is that the acoustic was so clean because of the, the lava field was essentially a whole series of more or less triangular, um, uh. Blocks of lava. There were like mini mountains with, with gaps in between. And because of the nature of the, the stone and the arrangement of all these lumps of lava, uh, it was like being in an koic chamber.

It was all the sound from outside was blocked out. Yeah, it was a calm day anyway, but you couldn't hear any distant traffic or any wind or anything. It was just silent. And, uh, the, the J Falcon sound is already powerful at the best of times. It is, yeah. But in those, in those circumstances, and then hearing the power of the wings of the j Falcon was just an amazing experience.

I, I play the recording now for everybody. This is Jar Falcon. A remarkable recording.

Five. Five. Five, five.

Is there arty turn in the background somewhere there? There is, yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a teeny snatch of rain and maybe a tiny bit of metal pivot somewhere. It's incredible that quite amazing. The thing that still amazes me is that it was 20 meters away. Mm-hmm. And uh, it was just because it was so quiet there.

Yeah. Next up we have Atlantic puffin and leches petrol. Where was that recorded, Magnus? So this was on an island in the Westman Islands in, uh, in Iceland. It's a grassy slope full of burrows that's shared by puffins and leeches storm petrols. Uh, in this particular recording I had the microphone between two puffin boroughs and so there were two puffins kind of reacting to each other, uh, from either side of the, of the equipment.

And meanwhile there was leches storm pitches flying over, heads making kind of woody woodpecker sounds. So it was just a, a lovely juxtaposition of two very different sounds but which definitely, you know, very much belonged together. And at nighttime, or I think it was, I mean we're talking Iceland in June, so it was dark enough for the leeches storm petrols to be active, but light enough to be able to, to read a book probably.

Yeah. Okay. I'll play that now. This is Atlantic Puffin and Leeches Petrol.

Amazing. Puffing noises are incredible, aren't they? Yeah. Really are. But um, yeah, that's absolutely wonderful. The next species you have, I, I've lost count that, you know, Magnus, the amount of times I have had microphones close to this species without them actually vocalizing, I've lost count. They're generally very, very silent.

Yeah. Is this the rough recording? It's the rough recording at luck. It's an incredibly difficult species to record. Yeah. Um, I see plenty of them here. I, I've only recorded one like tiny call. Just a very short call and that's it. Yeah. It's a remarkable recording. This one. Where was this recorded? So this was, this was on my trip to Arctic Siberia in 2004, and I could do a whole podcast just talking about that trip.

So I'll trendy but short, but I, I, I arrived there on the 1st of June. The plane landed on the sea ice and stepped out into a blizzards. And basically it took out three weeks before we could go somewhere by boats and I could really, um, get exploring the, the lane of delta. Anyway, um, this was on an island on the outer edge of the, the delta on the shores of the arctic ocean.

And, um, it was a, it was a lemming year, so there was snow yells around and pade, skewers and so on. And it also meant that the waiters were being left in peace mm-hmm. Uh, by all these predators. But on this particular occasion, I stumbled across a lake and the birds were very tame. They were, you know, hardly bothering to get out my way.

Um, so I popped down the microphone. In the area that they were more focused on and, uh, stood some distance away and very quickly they were back at their, their battles. Uh, and they got so close that you can actually hear them roughing their feathers. Yeah. So you're gonna hear a kind of sound, which is the sound of them literally roughing the feathers on their, on their, their n necks, on their necks.

Um, and at one point I chose the recording where there's fewer collisions with the actual microphone. They were that close. They were literally bounce, bouncing off the mics centimeters away. Um, and uh, yeah, so it's a, it's a very unusual perspective, but it's, uh, yeah, I was gonna ask you about that kind of wording sound.

I couldn't, I couldn't figure out whether it was something just vibrating in the throat or No, it's actually, it's actually the feathers on the night. The roof itself. It's actually them, uh, raising the feathers on their necks. Uh, it's the actual sound of them being roughed. Okay. That was some, uh, just fantastic.

I'll play it first. This is a rough luck.

Well, there's nothing quite like getting the microphone right up beside a board is there. It's always a wonderful result. Yeah, it doesn't have, it doesn't always have to be quite that close, but in this case it did catch something unique. Yeah, it's incredible. For, for listeners who aren't aware, Alek is actually a display of a species called roof and it's where the males compete for the detentions of females.

So they gather in groups and roof up their feathers on their necks. So that's what you've just heard there. Quite remarkable Magnus. It's fantastic. And, and they bash each other with their wings as you could all see here. Yeah. Next up is red fall rope. Where were you for that one? A few meters away from the last one.

Okay. Just, just down the road. Literally, I think, you know, within a hundred meters of, of the, the roughs, uh, I should say that on this trip to, to the Lana Delta, there were probably, I was there for nearly five weeks, and in those five weeks there were possibly five hours of optimal recording conditions.

Most of the time it was blowing a gale. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I, I was always desperately trying to get my, my equipment charged from dodgy generators, which made a lot of noise to be ready for, you know, whenever a moment of calm would arrive. And, uh, needless to say, I didn't have access to, I. Wind website. So I couldn't, I couldn't necessarily tell, tell when that was gonna happen anyway, so I had to grab these opportunities and, and, uh mm-hmm.

The, and same for the birds. They would also, you know, they would, you would see, one day you'd see them all huddled together on a tiny patch of gravel that wasn't covered by snow. Mm-hmm. Just trying to keep, you know, from freezing. And then the next day the snow would clear and they'd all be displaying like crazy.

Yep. So, on this particular day, there was a lot of displaying going on. It was probably the last week of June by this time. Um, and it was, uh, a tiny, a small pool, probably three meters long with a tiny island in the middle. And on the island was a male red, or if you prefer a gray fowler rope accompanied by a female.

And he was hers because in, in Fowler ropes, it's reverse sexual dimorphism. The female females fight over the males and the females are the ones with the bright plumes. Mm-hmm. Um, and around the edges of the pool, there were, I think. Nine other females who were all trying to pinch this male from the female.

So what would happen was you'd, you'd, the two were in the middle, and every now and then one of the others would jump into the island, try to try to budge the other one out the way, and, and you would hear a kerfuffle, a a lot of wing quiring and buzzing sounds. So it was high, high intensity. And they were so busy doing this.

They were so intensely engaged in this, uh, this displaying that they paid barely any attention to me. So I was able to walk up slowly, gently, put down my equipment right beside the pond and stand back, and they just got on with it again. You know, they hardly stopped. So here you go. Okay. We play the recording now.

Lovely. That's brilliant, isn't it? Mm. It was such a treat to be able to experience that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love it. The next recording is an awful lot of common grounds. One of my favorite species, by the way. I just, I, I think it's. One of the iconic sounds in European boarding for me anyway. Yeah. But, um, it's a remarkable recording.

Where did you take this one? So this was in the, I'll just pronounce it in the Ang ang the English way Gallo Canto. Mm-hmm. Uh, I'm not trying to say that in Spanish. It's a place in, I think it's Argon Northern Spain anyway. Mm-hmm. And it's an important wintering and staging site for common cranes. I think there can be five figure numbers of common cranes there at the peak Sea at the peak migration times.

Um, and I was there to make recordings for a book we did in 2008 with Anthony McGee Burning from the hip. Yeah. And so there's a story, if anybody wants to read the story of that trip, it's in that book. Okay. Um, anyway, the, I I, I realized that the, the cranes are on the cranes that roost at that lake would approach it the same way almost every time.

There were one or two sort of. Landing roots a bit like the approaches to an airport. Yeah. And if you, once I worked out where those, uh, approaches were, uh, I realized I could get a great recording of the flock coming over just by hiding the equipment under, you know, at the late stage of the, the landing route.

Yeah. So that's what I did. And I should warn you that don't turn up the volume if you, the distance in the beginning don't turn up the volume 'cause you'll have to turn it down again. Um, but it was a, yeah. Flock of a couple of hundred coming over and I think the heights they were probably about 20 meters above the equipment.

Yeah. Sounds, you can hear the wing beads and stuff. It's absolutely phenomenal. We'll play it now. And the just one thing, the high squeaky ones are the, are the juveniles. Yeah.

Oh, there we go. That's, that's incredible as well. Don't think the skylarks kept much sleep around there. Well, uh, the next, um, recording magnets is, is remarkable as much for the environment as the bird itself. It's gray headed woodpecker. Yeah. This one was in Sweden, actually. Mm-hmm. Uh, this was in Helsing land.

Okay. Um, and I was with, I was with Hawk and Delin. Okay. Uh, recording owls. And it, it, I, I had a number of trips with Hawken that were always really fantastic learning experiences. Um, and we would, we'd be up all night looking for owls or something. And on this particular occasion, we'd been out, I think it was March or April.

There was still a lot of snow on the ground anyway, and we'd been out recording Tang bombs halls. Um, and it came to the morning and the, it was already light and we were heading back to where we were staying. We came across this frozen lake. Um, and the way we'd been working all night would be, um, drive a short distance, get out, listen for a couple of minutes, if there was something to record, record it, then otherwise move on.

So we stopped here and quickly realized that the lake was making the most incredible. Sounds, which Swedes no doubt know very well. Mm-hmm. But those of us who don't live in places where lakes are, are frozen all winter, don't necessarily know. It's the, the totally other worldly sounds of the, of the ice cracking and, and buckling, uh, with temperature changes.

So that in itself was something fascinating to record. So I popped the, the, the SaaS, uh, with the SISes on the, actually on the ice itself. Mm-hmm. Touching the ice. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, at a certain point, gray headed blue picker came from the other side of the small lake, flew over the ice, landed in a tree nearby and started to sing.

So it was the, it was a very lucky, and it was just this amazing juxtaposition of an incredible soundscape with a bird that just brought it to, you know, brought it to life. Brought it to life. Yeah. Yeah. The Swedes refer to it as singing ice, I think. Mm-hmm. It just is quite nice, a nice term. I'll play the recording now.

Yeah.

I actually, um, I bought a pair of hydrophones this year in, in the hopes of actually recording ice and, uh, Uhhuh, it was some mild, there was no ice, oh no. This winter. So I'll have to wait possibly another year, but was another story for another day. But, um, I, I should, I just wanted to add that in that recording all the kind of whooshing sounds mm-hmm.

Sounds like wind in the trees. It's all the ice. Yeah. There was no wind. It's, it's all an incredible variety of sounds that, that the ice makes. It's quite violent. I went to ice fishing the first time I went to ice fishing. I was sitting on the ice and just these violent movements, you know, and huge cracking noises.

The trees around the lakes were moving as a result, and it was just, the guy was just completely unfazed. The guy was where he was used to it. Yeah. I, I, I spent the whole day terrified, just sitting on the, sitting on the, still going, are you sure this is okay? I can imagine. You know, for me it, it, it's, although it has absolutely nothing to do with it, it falls in the same category of, of.

Mind bending Northern phenomena as the Northern Lights. Yeah, absolutely. It's almost like an audio equivalent of the Northern Lights. Mm-hmm. Uh, in terms of its, you know, its other worldliness. Yeah. Speaking of remarkable recordings, the next one is White Bill Diver. I've, I had actually heard this before today, but it's, it's quite, it's just a wonderful, wonderful record.

I think it's an award-winning record. Is it? I, yeah, I did, I did get it. In fact, I, I won a prize for this that will come up in, in again in one of the later recordings. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was an amazing opportunity that I had to go to Arctic Canada. I was on an island called Victoria Islands, which is in Nunavut, I think it's called the, the region of Northern Canada, close to a town called Cambridge, Cambridge Bay, and it's a well known area for white build diver, also known as yellow gold loon.

And, uh, I went there with the hope of recording them, also knowing that it was a great place for recording. Waders and other arctic species. But I was very much hoping that, you know, this was my main targets. You know, you have to choose your strategies and what, what you're gonna work on. And this was very much what I chose to.

So they have big territories and they're very, very shy. All divers are, that's something that every sound recorders should know. Every, every person walking in nature, you have to be really careful with the divers. Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, you could get within a few hundred meters and, and they'll already slip off the nests, that kind of thing.

So it, it required a very, very careful approach. And I think the microphone was, I don't remember exactly how far, but it was, it was in the hundreds, the, the meters, you know, of meters from, from the, the nest. But the acoustics are so clean there, uh, that the sound travels. It's no doubt I, I don't have a detailed knowledge of this, but it no doubt has to do with temperature inversions, making the sound travel better over, over ice and over over very cold landscapes.

Um, and over water anyway, the acoustics are just marvelous when the wind dies down. Yeah. Um, and I had, I had my equipment on the lake edge close to, you know, this, uh, lake that they, that was their territory for days. And so this, this recording you'll hear is the best recording from several days of recording.

Um, you know, tens of hours of, of, of, of nonstop recording. And what you hear is, uh, you hear song of of a, a white wheel diver, another one responding in the distance and a Pacific diver responding in the distance. And then towards the end you hear some moans from the female. That was the closest of all. I think actually the, sorry, on this occasion, the, the, the bird doing most of the calling was, was halfway between the microphone and the nest.

So it was only maybe a hundred meters away. Okay. Uh, but, uh. The, and the other one's in the distance were 600 meters away or something. Yeah. It's incredible how far this sounds. I, I've been out recording black throw diver, um, a lot in the last few weeks. Yeah. And you know, I know where the lakes are in the landscape, so I know how distant they are and it's quite amazing to hear, you know, one way, way maybe four or five kilometers away on the lake calls.

Mm-hmm. Then the next lake I'll be quan, they start there and it's like a chain reaction just ripples through the whole park. It's absolutely incredible. Yeah. Yeah. They do, they go in for Mexican waves. Yeah. I resist, I resisted the temptation of, of including a very similar recording of, of great Northerns from Iceland.

Mm-hmm. Uh, but in, in, in that other one, you can very much hear this wave of very distant than a medium, distant than a close pair. So yeah, it's definitely, it's, it's something that divers do very much. Yeah. Very special recording this. I was just gonna say, I get. Like many people, I think they, they provoke a strong emotional reaction because it's a sound that could be some very exotic human, uh, vocalization.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and it's also a sound that our ancestors lived with for, for, you know, in the ice ages when the, these divers would've been breeding much further south. And so we've lived alongside them, we Europeans for a very long time. So I think it really touches something deep in us. Yeah. Um, and it is such an evocative sound.

Yeah, I agree. It's very primeval. I played a recording. Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful.

Oh,

oh,

oh,

oh.

Remarkable stuff I, I find with recordings, you know, you probably feel the same way that, you know, somebody can take a photograph, have a look at it, and, and remember the day as such and it'll sort of bring them back there a little bit. But I think with sound recording, it really does kind of just transport you back to exactly where you were at the time.

Absolutely. And, and for me, when I've done a trip somewhere interesting, I, I extend, you know, I I the pleasure of the trip goes on for months. Yeah. As I go through all the recordings, you know, I, I'm back there, uh, and I really, you know, it, this very much brings it back to me, what, what the place was like. I hear all the other birds in the background and mm-hmm.

It's, uh, it was a great trip. Brilliant. I love this next recording. Uh, Magnus, I listened to them all today and they're all fantastic, but I think this might be my favorite recording of the lot. It's pectoral Sandpiper. Oh, yeah. Uh, on the breeding grounds, I assume Canada as well. Was it? Yes. This was in the same, same area.

Mm-hmm. And so Pictor sandpipers are known for the, the males have, uh, a very weird song for a waiter. They, they develop a, the males develop a a a fatty throat patch. A throat sack, which they inflate almost like a frog. And they produce a kind of, the song goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The closest thing we have to that in Europe would be a shorty el or something, but it's, they, they, they do this in a, a song flight, just a, uh, a little above the ground. It's a very, it's a very weird display sound, but that's actually not what you're gonna hear in this recording. What you've got here is, I was trying to target the petal sandpipers, um, but there were, there was a pair on the ground that was making all kinds of weird and wonderful noises.

Um, so I put down my equipment and uh, I was hoping to catch some of that. But what happened was there was a male chasing a female, and he chased her in the kind of zigzag until they ended up very, very close as you can hear. And then right at the end you hear them flying off. But it's just in the most bizarre sounds that coming out of, it's mostly the male.

I think there's very little from the female, but it's just absolutely bizarre. The sounds it's making. I think the only thing we can do is just play it and let people listen to it. Yeah, just.

I hate to humanize bird sounds, but it sounds like somebody gargling Listerine or something. Yeah. Or you know, if it, if there was no wing bes there, you might assume you, you'd probably swear it was an amphibian. I don't know what I would think it was. Yeah, if I, if I didn't know, I, I really dunno what I would make of it.

It's quite amazing. It's just incredible sound. We're gonna move on to Cyprus s sc cell, which I think is, it's a fairly recent split, isn't it? Uh, well, reasonably, yeah. This century. Anyway, yeah, this was 2019. Uh, I went to Cyprus actually. The main interest for me that year was, was, uh, MI was trying to get recordings of some of the Eastern Mediterranean species migrating over in spring.

So I was putting out microphones in, in typically two or three a night in different places, hoping to pick up interesting stuff and one, one dusk. I was out. In the northwest of the island. Um, and I came across, I was in a little Pinewood and I came across what I instantly knew must be a nest box for a sculpt cell for Cypress sculpt cell because it was, uh, well typical all nest box, but with a, a hole that would only be suitable for, for a, a sculpt cell.

So I couldn't tell if it was occupied or not, but I thought there was a very good chance it was because it, it's a species that occurs in very high densities. Mm-hmm. So I thought, well, this looks as good a place as any to put out some equipment for, for not make. So I might as well see if I can get some, all the recording as while I'm at it.

So it was a small pine tree and I, I had these, I had these microphones that I had won in the competition for the, the white bill diver recording. And I'm, I'm, I should, I should be ashamed of myself for not knowing the exact name of them, but they were core audio mics, high spec mics, more or less the size of a chocolate Easter egg.

Two of them. Mm-hmm. And, uh. I for reasons that will become apparent, I've suppressed the details in my mind because this was kind of a painful experience. So what happened was I tied, I tied them one each on, on, on the branch on either side of the, of the nest box, the lower part of the tree. Um, and, uh, tied them, I think I took off my shoelaces and used those to tie them to the branches.

Um, and they were about maybe a meter on either side of the nest box, maybe a bit less, and know if I went. So it turned out that the nest box was inhabited and, uh, there was quite a bit of our activity during the night. Um, and we play a rec, the, the best re result of the night's recording, which made what followed slightly less painful.

Okay. Um, was, uh, was when the pier got together. And you hear the male hooting and then female joins in, and then at a certain point it reaches a climax and there's a bit of high pitch squeaking, and that's them copulating. Excellent. So we'll play that one first. So this is Cyrus Sculpt Cell Copulating.

I, I should explain that I wasn't there, I didn't see them coating, but I know that sound from various other sculpt cell species that that's the sound that accompanies the act. Anyway, when I got back in the morning, I, the first thing I noticed was one of the microphones was gone. So the, as I'm standing looking at the next box, nest box, the, the microphone on the left of the box was still there.

The one on the right, the wire was still there, the cable was still there, but it had been. Nipped off by something. And of course, I, I, I searched on the ground underneath quite, uh, extensively. Uh, couldn't find any sign of it. So I suspected it might have something to do with the owls, but I, I, I realized that I would probably find out from the recording.

So I listened to the recording and the first few hours of the night, I think till midnights all is well. There's a few visits with the male hooting, the female responding, and, uh, this population and things are going quite well until about, I think it was two o'clock in the morning. Um, when I could tell from, from the sounds that were already quite familiar now from this pair, I could tell the female was sitting quite close to the, the microphone that disappeared.

I. She's sitting there giving the, the very, the very quiet hoots that you heard at the last, uh, at the end of the recording just now, she was giving those kind of hoots. And then you start hearing a kind of nibbling sound and the nibbling gets stronger and stronger. It goes on for several minutes. I, and we're gonna play the last bit, and then actually you're going to hear the death of my microphone because she, she ate it basically, or at least she, at least she, she nipped it off.

And at a certain point, the, the mic, the cable is severed and from that point on, you just hear white noise. Um, I think it's pretty safe to say she had it well, and I sincerely hope that she regurgitated it afterwards because I'm sure that eating a microphone is not very good for you. I think of, of, of all the species in the world, ELs are probably the most likely to regurgitate un harmed by it.

I love Mike happily. Anyway, there's a good chance that if I'd opened up the Nest box, I could have found it inside there that she would've Okay. But I didn't want to do that. I thought, you know, fair's fair, you win. So this is, um, this is, uh, probably a very, very expensive recording of Yeah. Of Cypress cell.

And we might allow ourselves to talk over this one because Yeah, go ahead. It will help to help to reduce some of the, some of, to listen to it. Everybody loves the tragedy. Yeah.

Here she combs. So that's her nibbling away before actually having damaged anything.

I, I don't whether, whether she actually had the microphone, including the little foam actually in her bill at this point. I don't know that it seems quite likely.

Roll. So

stop, please.

Oh, dear. I was just about to say before the, the, the more violent noises started that it sounded like she was moving around in her bill. I think she was. Yeah. I think you were actually listening to the inside of a Cyrus Sculpt bill. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Okay. Of all places to go next, we're going to Africa from Cyrus to Africa.

This is a mammal recording. I'll let you tell us about this. Quite an incredible recording. Well, it was actually supposed to be a waiter recording because I was in the Maasai. Mara, uh, had this amazing opportunity to go there. The main motivation for going was actually to record, um, Caspian. Uh, 'cause that's where a good number of them winter.

But being the Maasai Ma, there was plenty of other, uh, amazing wildlife to behold. Anyway, there was also another target species for us was three banded plover, and there weren't that many of them, but there was a kind of, this particular pair that I was after we're on the edge of a, an artificial reservoir.

It was only less than a hundred meters long, but it was big enough to have a, a couple of hippos staying there during the day. So I wanted to, I knew being plovers, I thought there was a good chance these birds would be most vocal at dusk or, and during the night. So I thought I'd put out a, a, a set of equipment in, you know, their favorite spot around the edge of this, this reservoir, and leave it for the night.

I hadn't, I, I, I thought there was a good chance that, that I would get some hippo sounds, at least some splashing around and maybe the odd fart or something. But I, I, I didn't, I didn't, uh, well, I didn't know if they would, if they would be vocal, but I certainly didn't anticipate the main character that appears in this recording.

So you're gonna hear a lion very close. And, uh, you're, you're also going hear the hippos in the latter part of the recording. You're gonna hear some strange hippo sides, obviously not very happy. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite incredible. I listened to this earlier on, on a fairly high volume, and it's the kinda, the hairs in the back of your neck almost stand up at one point.

Well, if you listen really carefully, there's a good chance that you'll hear other lines in the distance. Mm-hmm. Because you can hear them in this particular place that had a high density of lines. And at any given point, you'd probably hear a lion somewhere every, every five to 10 minutes. Yeah. So there might be distant ones too.

Okay. Probably the first and last time, while bird acoustics will have lions as a, we have played the recording. It's incredible.

I was, I was told a story years ago, I think it was Jim Fitz Harrison, or they went down to South Africa on a burden trip and they were told, of course, never get outta the car. You know, don't get outta the Jeep. There's, there's, there's big predators around and stuff, and I can't remember what the bird was.

It might have been a species of beader, but he got outta the car and he photographed it and got back to Dublin. He was doing a slideshow in Dublin, and he was shown the slide of this beader, um, or might have the species around, but he was shown a photograph of this bird anyway, and it was questions at the end, you know, and somebody asked him, you know, how far away was the lion behind the beader?

And he, he was still unaware, went back to the photograph and blurred in the background. There was an African lion just in the background. And he was never even aware it was there until that moment. On this particular occasion, I had to, so we, I chose my spot for the Plover recording and I asked the driver if he could go as close as possible.

Obviously without going onto the actual habitat, we got close to some bushes and then I nipped out as fast as I possibly could because mm-hmm. Looking over my shoulder all the time because hippos are really dangerous. Yeah. And very territorial. But fortunately it didn't come after me. So yeah. I was very aware of the danger.

Mm-hmm. Right. We're going to go finish up one last recording. It's a nocturnal recording of Spotted Sandpiper. Is this from Canada or, yes, this was on Vancouver Island. And yeah, I wanted to include something of, not me, because that's been a major obsession of mine. Mm-hmm. Uh, but with not me, the recordings are often the content or the thing you're capturing is more exciting than the recording itself.

Very, you know, it's very hard to get really good quality. Sound recordings of, of not make this one is, is one of the better ones I have. Mm-hmm. And it's interesting because I find that with waders in particular, if, if there's one, if you want to learn just one sound of a waiter, that will help to unlock all the other ones, I would say learn their kind of default flight calls that they make during nocturnal migration.

Of course they vary them, but there is, for any given species, there's a kind of archetype that they, that they vary from, which is it at its most stable in nomik, in nocturnal migration. So it was only really after listening to recordings of spotted sandpipers migrating at night that I finally really grasped what was the difference from common Sandpiper.

Okay. And for those who are interested, I'll just quickly say what those differences are. So it's lower pitched and uh. The notes. So in a common Sandpiper flight call, it's a descending series of rising notes. So each note is rising, but the series as a whole descends and it's much higher pitched In spotted Sandpiper, it's not really, it descends a tiny bit, but nothing like as much as a common sandpiper.

The notes are longer, they're concave shapes, so in other words, they, they, uh, I, if I exaggerate a lot, it's like sort of curlew shapes in curly shaped notes, so they, they're flat at first and then rise rapidly. So it's a, it's a, I'm not doing a very good job here. But anyway, the much lower pitch than a, than a common sand piper, and it's, it is quite a distinctive sound once you get to know it.

So, yeah. And more level overall. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll play the recording.

That sounds like green sandpaper to my ear almost. Mm-hmm.

The pitch is noticeably different, isn't it? From Common Sandpiper? I'm, I'm very familiar with them. Yeah. It's much lower. Yeah. I think that's what makes you think of Green Sandpiper. Yeah. It's more in the pitch range of a green Sandpiper. Mm-hmm.

Well, that's all the recordings. Magnus. That was lovely. Thank you very much for the opportunity to play these. It's, it's always lovely to hear some of these, you know, to focus on the, on the recording and not just what's in them. Yeah. I I think it's kind of nice just to let kind of slightly longer recordings play out a little bit as well.

You know, it's, it's quite often you just get very, very short recordings published and I think it's nice just to play two or three minutes of something. Especially some of these recordings are absolutely incredible. Yeah. And again, I'd just like to thank you for coming on and being so generous to share them with everybody.

It's wonderful. Well, thank you very, very much, Alan. And if I can just do a final tiny wee plug just to tell people that the, the, our second edition of our sound approach to burning will be out in a few months and it'll be well worth looking into even if you have the first edition. Absolutely. Is it slightly updated or It's very updated.

Yeah. Okay. A lot of new recordings. A lot of new recordings, a lot of new content. I'd say the second half of the book, more than the second half is, is almost entirely new. Okay. That's something to look forward to. Yeah, I think people will be delighted to hear about that as well. So I wish you very, very well with that guys.

And, um, once again, Magnus, just thanks very much for coming on. It's been absolutely wonderful having you on here. What, what more can I say? It's been absolutely brilliant. The recordings have been fantastic and you've been in great. Just lovely to talk to you. Oh, thank you very much, Alan. Not at all. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Okay, that's Magnus. Rob, everybody here at Wild Bird Acoustics.

So there you go folks. That was an interview with Magnus Rob, of the Sound Approach team. Once again, I just wanna thank Magnus for coming onto the podcast and providing such an incredibly interesting interview, and especially for sharing some of that incredible audio.  And I hope you did enjoy it all.

You guys out there, the listeners.    It always amazes me how generous people can be with their time. 

Magnus is a very busy individual and this was actually recorded just the evening before he was due to fly out to Kazakhstan with Rene Pop to attempt to record Caspian Plover on the breeding grounds in Kazakhstan. So, like I say, he was extremely busy, but that didn't stop him from coming on. And she, those recordings and his knowledge with you, the listeners here at Wild Bird Acoustics.

So heartfelt thanks to Magnus Robb  and wonderful to hear that there's an updated book coming on the sound approach words with plenty of new audio and that's a very exciting development. So hopefully we'll see that book soon and thanks for letting us know about that Magnus, and I'm sure that will be of great interest to many of the listeners out there.

 Now that's all for me just now at Wild Bird Acoustics, as I say. I hope you have enjoyed that Wonderful, wonderful interview with Magnus Rob. We'll see you next time at the podcast folks.

 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 Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com.

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We will 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.