Winter Recording in Stockholm City; Autumn Recording in Västerbotten.

In the initial sound magazine in this episode, I discuss winter recording close to home, in Stockholm City. Winter in Sweden is generally quite harsh, but a milder season than is usual over the course of 2024/25 saw me venture out into the field around Stockholm City, where I managed to get some lovely recordings, despite the urban setting. In this sound magazine, I hope to highlight the possibilities of field recording close to home, even in an urban setting.

The second sound magazine will take listener's further north, to the coastline of Västerbotten, during the autumn period. Over the course of late autumn 2024, I deployed a passive recorder along the coastline of Northern Sweden, primarily to document the migration of a wide range of species in the area, by day and night.  The autumnal sounds at this location are quite remarkable, as a host of migrant species funnel southwards along the coast at this time of year. A wide range of interesting resident species add further interest at this location and some of the recordings captured can often be quite wonderful. Join me as I share some of the audio bycatch at this wonderfully quiet and remote location...

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 welcome everybody once again to Wild Bird Acoustics. It's season two, episode 11. I'm your host, Alan Dalton, and I have a lovely episode lined up for you here today.  And naturally because it's the middle of summer when this goes out, I will be starting with winter recording.

 Now, season one of wild bird acoustics pretty much followed these seasons in that I was playing spring audio and spring summer audio in summer and so on. I wanted to break that up just a little bit in season two, so that it's not quite as predictable.

So over the course of the winter in 2020 4, 25, I was doing a little bit of recording. I don't tend to get out as much in the winter. Here in Sweden it's freezing cold quite often there's snow and rain. It makes it difficult to get out with electronic equipment and do some field recording, but it is something I had kind of wanted to do a little bit of all the same.

Now, I did manage to get out locally quite often. Very, very close to the apartment. In fact, as little as just a few meters away from my apartment window and all will be revealed in this first sound magazine. 

Nowadays a winter recording here in Stockholm City, and it's quite a nice little sound magazine, which I just put together in the last few months, and it just gives you an idea of what can be achieved very, very close to home, even in the middle of an urban area such as Stockholm City. So hopefully this inspires a few of you.

Just get out and do a little bit of a sound recording close to home. At any time of the year. It doesn't have to be winter, but obviously close to home here in the winter when it's very, very cold, makes things considerably easier. I'll play these sound magazine now. This is winter recording in Stockholm City.

 Now welcome everybody to another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics in this sound magazine. I'm gonna be taking you through a little bit of recording that I did over the course of the winter, 2024, 2025. I don't do a great deal of recording in the winter here in Sweden. There's a number of reasons for that.

The forest is, it's extremely cold and it can be quite difficult actually just to get out there. Quite often there's a lot of rain or snow. Makes it difficult with electronic equipment just to get out and do some recordings, but it can be very, very rewarding and I dig it out a little bit over the course of the last winter and do a little bit of sound recording.

So I have a handful of nice sound recordings that I got over the course of the winter, and I'll run through those with you now. Now the first pieces I have for you is Mandarin Duck. Now, Mandarin Duck is not a, how would you say, genuinely wild species here in Sweden. It's category C or DI think. But there is a group of them quite close to my home.

I just became interested in recording them. There was a group close to the house in t London Park, and I just thought, why knock it out there and actually record the species? Now all of these recordings were made with these Sennheiser eight oh two oh microphones a wonderful bit of kit. The birds are actually present in a park called Tan London, and they're roosting this small group of bushes.

Quite close to a large bridge. I got there early in the morning just as it was getting bright, and there were four females and four males present at the site. I made this short recording. You're gonna hear some high pitched calls here from the male birds as they call two of the female birds, and also a kind of a sneezing or coughing call that the males also make in the background.

There's blue tit, quite a few of those, some distant jackdaw and hooded crow and other common species. The main species here have a careful listen. Here's a mandarin duck.

Now another call type for you here. This is the female birds from the same group early that morning, and it's quite a different call. There's a couple of the sneezing calls here from the email as well. Also in the background, again, it's blue tit and a few other common species. But listen here for the female type calls from Mandarin Duck in particular, have a listen folks.

Now next up, while I was there, a female bird flew in and gave the flight call, quite a short recording, but a very clear recording of Mandarin duck female, the flight call, and I think this is the call that generally is given on nocturnal migration for anybody who may get it in areas where this bird is more plentiful.

Quite a rare species as such in Sweden, even though it's not resident or even a native species. But the air is starting to increase after a number of birds have escaped into the boils. Once again, this is the flight call of female Mandarin Duck.

Now we'll move on. And I live right in the middle of Stockholm City and I don't neglect, basically my window of my apartment outside. There's quite a nice area in the back of the apartments in enclosed area. A few birds in it. We have breeding field fair, for example. Breeding magpie, breeding Jay last year, which was quite wonderful.

And a few other species in the winter and in the autumn, I get things like wax wing and stuff moving through. So I do keep an eye on this little area, even though it's in the middle of a busy city. Over the course of the winter, I used a pair of lab mics, a pair of uc, micros, and I just stuck them out the window some nights.

And basically what I was after was corvids. I get some of them roosting in the winter and they make some wonderful sounds. And I did get this magpie on one of the first nights. I tried that. A very common species, but quite a nice recording. So I'll play that for you now. This is the calls of common magpie.

So that's common magpie, and I have a nest right outside my window, only about four meters away from my kitchen window. In fact, and it's probably something I'm gonna look into in the spring over the next couple of years, just to try and do a bit more recording of them. Even though they are very common species, I love their vocalizations.

Now, the species I was really after was Jack, dah. There's a roost some evenings. It's very, very hard to kind of know when they're gonna come in un roost. They seem to like to do so in windier conditions when it's, you know, quite sheltered in the back garden. So it was several nights of putting out the microphones before I actually got lucky one night, and I got a group moving in to give some wonderful, wonderful calls.

And quite often I'm sitting there watching the telly. I can hear them out the window and it's a wonderful noise. And it gives some beautiful sounds. I'm gonna play a few of those recordings for you. Now. First up, we have a recording of Jack Daw at the roost In the middle of the night, have a listen to the contact calls and calls with these birds.

Now here in Stockholm City, there is a huge roost of Jack Daw in so mam, the small island where I live just south of the city center. I quite often watch these birds just gathering for roost overhead in the evenings and a number up to about 2000 birds. It's very difficult to pin down where these birds are actually gonna roost in the evening.

They seem to have several sites, depending on weather conditions. Quite often there's large numbers of hooded crow with them as well. And it's something I have kind of penciled in for the future. I'd love to get this kind of large scale, massive soundscape, recorded properly. It can be quite difficult of course, 'cause it's very, very urban and there's a lot of noise pollution here in the city.

But for the moment I'm just gonna stick with some of the smaller groups of Jack do that I got just outside my apartment window. I got some wonderful recordings. I really like these birds. They're so social. I like their calls and they're incredible birds to watch. Very, very charming, very, very intelligent.

And like I say, it's just a species that I very much enjoy. I just like their vocalizations. I play. One more recording now. This is Jack dot just outside mere Parton window here in Stockholm City.

Now it's great to have these little projects, especially so close to home, and I became quite obsessed with getting a nice recording of these birds. Sitting by the window wondering if they're gonna come in Andros on any given night. The only thing that was more interesting these birds was Eric Hash Milo, who loves to sit in the windowsill in the evening and watch these birds when they come in.

Now, Milo's quite old now, so you know, that's probably one of the few pleasures in life he gets these days. He doesn't get outta the apartment and he's pretty much stuck in air, so it's a bit of excitement for him. And I have to tell you, I know how he feels these days getting older myself. But anyway, back to the Jack Das.

Eventually I got the recording I was looking for. This is a very nice recording. I think of Jack Das at Roost, just kind of giving all kinds of calls and I was really happy with this one. And it just goes to show, if you're paying attention to what's around you in the world, you don't have to go very far, quite often for decent recordings.

So I'll play that for you now. This is a very nice recording of Jack Doz in the middle of the night, just calling. It's about an hour before dawn when this happens.

Now something a bit different for you now. I was out at Santa Ma Reserve in January. There was a thaw on, a lot of moisture, was dripping off the trees, and I left my recorder down, closed to a group of tough to duck. And in this recording, it's more about ambience ready, the dripping off, the thaw off the trees.

A lot of dripping noises here. And towards the end of this three minute recording, you will hear quiet calls of tough to duck. Also some distant hooded crow.

There you go. There's a bit of noise there from a distant road. I didn't really want to edit it out too much because I found when I tried to edit out the road noise, it really interfered with the quiet calls of the T to duck. Kind of ruined the whole point of the recording, so I decided to lead that in.

It does demonstrate how difficult it can be to get away from noise pollution. Now on the same day, I actually got a lovely soundscape of various birds just moving around an area. And this sounds great. You're gonna hear just the noises of various species. There's field fair calling constantly. There's the clee call a black woodpecker at the beginning, the calls of Raven as they fly overhead.

Various calls from Blackbird, contact calls and alarm calls. And a lot of calls from Goldcrest, which have just appeared in the area as the thought starts to happen in late January. It was an incredibly mild winter here, and it was amazing how quickly birds returned to Sweden as soon as that began. Also, here you will hear missile thrush, the rattle call, but I play these soundscape for you.

Notice, again is about three minutes long. Now again, there's a little bit of road noise in the distance. I decided not to edit it out again because it was interfering with the calls, the lower calls of things like Raven. I'll play that for you now. This is quite a nice soundscape from Sandmeyer Reserve at the end of January, 2025.

I.

Now, next up, I have a nice species for you. It is crested tit. It is a resident here in Sweden and it's a bird off and gravitate towards to one. I'm out recording in winter, one of the more unusual species, very vocal road show of winter, and I particularly like their call. In this recording, you're gonna hear the bubbling chattering calls of crested tit.

Have a listen.

Now before I go, one more of crested tit. Both of these crescent recordings were recorded with the Tinga parabola on the day. They were recorded at NRA Reserve in early February and had a wonderful day out there. It was quite nice and not a lot of birds on that particular occasion, but it was very kind of winter wonderland scene, and it was just simply very nice just to be out in the woods in a nice, snowy environment.

So, like I say, this is a recording of Crested hit. Again, a very nice recording and as always, with the Tinga Pbla, wonderfully focused. Now there's some blue hit and gray hit in the background. Also a distant kick call of Great spotted Woodpecker, but it's quite easy to distinguish the calls here of Crested Hit A Wonderful Species here in Sweden.

Quite common in certain areas and it's a species are never turn of recording. Have a listen.

So there you go, folks. That's winter recording and it's probably something I should definitely do a lot more of. I do tend to recharge my batteries in the winter. I'm extremely busy right through the spring, even the summer, and I generally find by the time I get to the winter, especially after the ottman, I'm really active outboarding as all birders are.

I'm quite wiped out and I spent most of my winter actually just. Putting the podcast together, going through all my recordings, especially the huge amount of audio I have for my listening stations. I have to get through all that, especially the vis MIG stuff. So I generally use the, the, the winter in sweetener is quite rough, quite dark, quite cold, and I find it's an excellent time to actually just process and just get through my audio.

And that's generally what I spend the winter doing. Sometimes at a detriment of actually getting out into the field. I'm getting a little bit of field recording done. It's been quite nice. I've been quite surprised to go through the sound magazine and this little file that I had just of winter recordings and to find out, I've almost a half an hour of recordings to share with you guys, so that's been quite nice.

It just goes, you can get out any time of the year and do some field recording. Obviously some birds, most birds are much more vocal during the spring or on migration, but it doesn't mean there's nothing going on even here in Sweden. Where most species leave in the winter, there's still quite a bit going on, so I hope you have enjoyed that.

That's winter recording here in Sweden, and once again, thanks for listening folks, and we'll see you next time.

 So there you go. That's winter recording here in Stockholm City, a short sound magazine. We're gonna move along now. Now, first up, I just wanna say the response to the last episode, the wonderful interview with Magnus Rob, was absolutely terrific. I got a very,  📍 very high amount of listens for that episode, and it does kind of tell me that interviews are quite popular.

 If you enjoy the interviews, we will be doing at least one more in season two. I do want to kind of keep the podcast very much on the keel of listening to audio playing myo and audio.

I. But I do actually want to get into interviews a little bit more, at least two or three a season if possible. 

 Now I'm gonna move along for the moment and onto our second sound magazine of the episode. And just briefly before we get started on that, I want to talk briefly about passive recording.

  Now I've used quite a number of passive recording devices over the years.

I started with audiomoths, but I've now progressed on to using SM mini recorders by wildlife acoustics, and I'm very happy with these. They are quite incredible devices. You can leave them out.  They have a very long battery life. Indeed.  Now personally I like to use the lithium battery model, which lasts even longer in the field.  I can get about 1,020 hours of field recording time, which is quite incredible.  Now I have found the microphones are perfectly adequate, especially if the subject is close to the microphone, which often happens on long deployments.

You get birds moving in right beside the devices, and quite often you can get quite incredible audio.

 Now each year in the north of Sweden at Halligan, a small island on the coast of VA button, I leave devices out to monitor autumn migration. Now, one of these is located right on the coast of the island pointing towards the coastline of the Swedish mainland. And I used this mainly to monitor migrating birds as they move south along the coastline in the autumn.

And when I leave there in September, I always leave the device out to catch. All of the birds are moving through in late Autumn through October and. Early November and when I return up to the island the next year, usually in July in the summer, I love to get my hands in this  'cause it's always full of lovely audio.

Now the fact that I can actually leave a device on the island in late September, right through the winter, it will record through October, and batteries usually run out around mid-November. But the fact that I can leave there for the entire winter completely alone is quite remarkable. 

Temperatures regularly get down to about minus 25 degrees in the winter, possibly even a little bit colder,  but these devices are quite incredible. They're really, really tough. They've no problem with really tough weather, really cold weather, really wet weather.

They're completely waterproof, and I've had no issues with them whatsoever, so it's a fantastic device. For that reason, I can leave in late September, just leave the device out. It gives me all of the information and numbers of birds flying over the island,  and like I say, I can just return the next July and.

Take out the card and the audio is absolutely perfect. Now, this year was no exception. I got there in July, retrieved the card. No problems. As I say with the audio, and I've actually gone through most of it now and I picked up some lovely, what I call audio by catch. Quite often when birds are just sitting close to the recorder on the island or maybe just offshore on the water, and I put a little sound magazine together from this audio.

Now, I've been so impressed with these devices over the last couple of years. I managed to save over the course of the winter and buy a couple more. And this year I've been doing quite a lot of passive recording around Stockholm and other areas as a result. And I'm sure you're gonna hear a lot of that audio in season three.

But for now, I'm gonna bring you up north up to Vassar button in the autumn time, and this is passive recording in Vassar button. Have a listen folks.

 Welcome everybody to Wild Bird Acoustics once again, and we have a short sound magazine here for you concerning diurnal audio from Halligan in Västerbotten in Northern Sweden. Now, when I visited the island in July this year, I collected audio from my SM mini recorder, which had been out late autumn last year.

Now I hadn't been back on the island since August, 2023 and had five weeks audio to go through. Now what I do generally speaking is I record all throughout the night with these recorders and they also record the first four hours of light. And during that diurnal period, I quite often get some nice accidental bike hatch, and you never know what that's gonna be, folks.

So I have great hopes every year, particularly in the month of October. It's such a good month for birds. You never know what's gonna be on. So what I thought I'd do is I'd just pick out a few moments from October, 2023 in Northern Sweden and share these with you today in the Short Sound magazine. Now the first one I have for you is a golden eye, a bird just flying past the microphone calling.

Now, what laid on was quite a few golden eye around the island, generally speaking, and quite often when I'm not there, it seems they come very close to the recorder and it's a nice species to get a decent recording of. So the first recording up. Is a, and also into recording you can hear some hooper swans as well, and as well as at the typical wing beats of Golden Eye, common golden eye, which is very distinctive to hear in flight.

You'll hear that towards the end of the recording, so this is common golden eye just to get us rolling. I.

Now the next recording I have for you is that of a dunk. I think this is a migrant bird just resting on the island. It's about a minute and a half long and it's quite a nice background here at the start. You're can hear some parallel cross bill going over. It's also some willow tit in here in the background as well as hooded crow calling.

And towards the end of the recording, quite a bit of Northern Raven action going on on the island behind the recorder. I think I. In the trees as well as some passing Eurasian system. So a nice ottum scene. This was taken on the 10th of October, 2023.

Now late Autumn is a wonderful time in VA button for migrating parish crossbill. In the following recording, I hear a lovely big flock of par cross bill going down the coast or possibly up the coast. Quite often I see them in the autumn migrating towards Finland in a northeasterly direction. But also here in the background, there's a lovely bit of audio from a very close scolding.

Field fair, as well as some hooded crow in the background. We'll give this a listen now. This is a lovely tum scene from the island recorded on the ninth October, 2023.

Next up, I have a nice recording of a gray headed woodpecker. Quite a scar species in a vast button, but they're very regular on the island in September, October. This bird came quite closer to recorder, probably as a flew back towards the mainland. As I say, quite a nice recording as always. There's quite luck on background here.

The main subject is gray headed Woodpecker. We'll have a listen to that now.

Now the next recording is of a very common species, and it's common or Eurasian magpie. And on this occasion, there's a couple of birds very, very close through the recorder and they're scolding something, possibly a spear hawk or a goshawk, something like that. It sounds like they're scolding a predator.

But it makes for an absolutely wonderful recording. And as always, folks, as they always say, never overlook common species. It's quite often the case that, you know, you just scroll through this audio too quick, looking for scarce species or migrants. I. And you might overlook something like this, bit of audio of Magpie, but natural fact, it's well worth keeping nice bits of audio like this.

I'll play it for you now. It's about two and a half, three minutes long. This is a lovely bit of audio of scolding. Magpie is one of my favorite species. Vocally in Vast button in Northern Suite.

Now my SME is left on a tree trunk up in Halligan and it's on a Rowan tree. And every year in October, assuming the Rowan tree has some berries, I get the following species at very close range, and the species is bohemian wax wing. Now the doorbell calls of the species are one of my favorite calls. I absolutely love this noise, so I'm gonna play that for you now.

Again, it's a lovely ottum scene in the background. You can hear some part of Crossbell, as always. They always seem to be going over there in October, and some Goldcrest in here as well. It just has some trouble. Last year in October with barking dogs in the distance, it's hunting season in Sweden in October, they hunt for moose here and.

Quite often in the distance in the woods you can hear dogs, but it's not too bad and I can live with it before now. This is a lovely recording of wax wing, very close to the recorder in late October last year.

Now it's absolutely wonderful to have a recorder running in a location like this, full-time in the autumn. And naturally what it leads to is some wonderful passages of audio and in the following passage, this is about three months long. There's quite a few species. It's absolutely wonderful. You have a flock of part of cross bill going over quite close range at one point.

They're moving around probably over the islands and also here you have a nice recording of the call of gray headed woodpecker. This is the standard call of the species, quite a mellow mournful sound, and very much a sound I associate with Northern Sweden. Now there's also wax wing here in the background on huddle Crow.

And if you listen carefully, you will hear other automal species passing over overhead on migration. But just a general lovely automal scene here, and I'm gonna play that for you now. So mainly parted cross bill and gray headed woodpecker.

Now. Next up, I have a lovely bit of audio for you from a windy morning on October the third, 2023, when a flock of common crane went over the recorder on migration. Now, this is a common occurrence in early October with birds moving down the coast at that time of the year, and quite often the flocks can average sort of 52 80 birds perhaps.

Now if you listen carefully here amongst the crane, you will hear the calls of the juvenile birds quite different to the trumpeting calls of the adults. Now, particularly like this recording, there's a lovely bit of ambiance here from the windfield leaves in the trees. It's a very odd tunnel. There's a ticking robin in the background calling from some cover and some overhead calls from various migrants, and you'll hear all of that in this recording.

Very atmospheric. Very typical of Northern Sweden in early October. This is common crane on migration.

 Next up I have a very short recording, short and sweet. It's a common shift, chaff the typical calls of these species here in Sweden on migration. Little bit different to the calls perhaps that you typically hear in the UK and Ireland. These northern CH CHS tend to sound like this. This is very short.

Like I say, I'll play it for you quickly.

Now for the final recording in this sale magazine from Northern Sweden in October, 2023, one of my favorite species, and as you probably notice, I have a soft spot for Covid. And my favorite cor is Northern Raven. In this recording, you're gonna hear some lovely low guttural calls from a very close bird.

You can actually hear it's a wing beads at one point in this lovely recording. This is Northern Raven.

So there you go. That's a collection of sounds all recorded with an SM mini recorder. By wildlife acoustics. Now it's obvious that this is not as high quality as say its sling of Pbla or a Sennheiser array, but in actual fact they're perfectly adequate and you can get some absolutely wonderful audio with these devices.

I absolutely love the fact that they're completely weatherproof. They will record for up to 1,020 hours, which is quite mind boggling. I get seven weeks of nights with four hours of diurnal audio after dawn. And they're just fantastic. For that reason, I always pick up a huge amount of audio from these and some invaluable information on the numbers of migrants going over at night.

So if anybody's thinking about getting one of these devices, I would say if you wanted four pure recording, probably not. You're probably better off investing your money in a microphone such as a shotgun microphone, and sticking with that. It'll give you cleaner audio. But for automated recording, nothing beats the SM Mini.

In my humble opinion. And as I mentioned, it picks up some wonderful by catch on. The quality of the audio could be very, very good, as you can hear in this short sound magazine. So once again, thanks for joining me here at Wild Bird Acoustics. I hope you have enjoyed these little tidbits and bits of sound from October, 2023 in Västerbotten Northern Sweden.

So there we are. That's passive recording way up north in Sweden on the coast of VA button on my favorite place to be in the autumn, the island of Halligan. The island itself is absolutely tiny. It's only the size of a couple of football pitches, but it's wonderfully quiet there in the autumn. I'm planning to get up a bit longer than usual this year in 2025.

I want to get up for at least two weeks in late September as opposed to the usual single week. That I spend there and spend a little bit more time this year sound recording the birds actively as they go over on migration  no, I hope you have enjoyed that Second Sound magazine.

As I say, it was all recorded passively. I wasn't there for any of it, and it was recorded with a wildlife acoustics SM mini recorder. So incredible little devices. Very, very useful to use. They are a little bit expensive, but I think it's very, very much worth it. And. Just in terms of the records from the island alone, it's fantastic to be able to monitor migration all the way through autumn when I cannot be there.

So for that alone, for me, it's absolutely worth the outlay.  Anyway, I'm watching my clock here closely and it seems like time is up once again here at the podcast on Wild Bird acoustics that closes another episode. That was episode 11 of season two, and I do hope, as always, you have enjoyed it. That's all from me, Alan Dalton, and we'll see you again in a couple of weeks here at Wild Bird Acoustics.

 So that brings us to the end of another episode of Wild Bird Acoustics, and I hope you've enjoyed it. As always, you can find us on YouTube by simply searching for wild bird acoustics. We do have a mailing list also, and if you want to be part of that folks, you can drop us an email at Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com.

Now all feedback is greatly received here at the podcast. And if you'd like to write 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 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.