July in Northern Sweden; Nocturnal Recording at Sandemar Reserve

In this, the finale of the second season, we take an initial trip to Västerbotten, for a relaxing selection of recordings from the coastline in July. I wanted to share some particularly nice audio with listeners in this finale. Along the coastline of Northern Sweden is where I enjoy field recording the most and I thought this would be an apt way to begin the final episode of this second season..

The main sound magazine documents an incredible overnight trip to Sandemar Reserve. I knew when I was putting this sound magaizine together, that it contained some rather special audio. The night in question was quite magical and has remained fresh in my memory, ever since. This was simply a case of saving the best until last and I hope you enjoy this audio experience...

The Grand Finale; See you all in 2026 for Season 3!

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 to Wild Bird Acoustics. It's season two, episode 20. It's the last episode of these second season, and wow, what a journey I. I never would've thought I would've been here, to be honest, when I first started putting the first sale magazine together, maybe three years ago. And I just wanna thank all the listeners really for making it such an amazing experience.

Thanks for your feedback. Thanks for listening. And also, I wanna thank the people who came on this season and last season for interviews and gave up their free time so willingly. And just so generously shared their time and the recordings with you, the listeners, it's been an absolutely wonderful experience.

Now, I'm not gonna lie to you, season one was very, very easy. I had several years of recordings kind of to fall back on, but season two was much more difficult. And what it meant was I had to get out into the field. I was pushed out into the field a lot more just to get enough audio to put together 20 hours or 20 episodes of a podcast together, 

as difficult as it was, I wouldn't take any of it back whatsoever. It just pushed me out into the field and I had some incredible experiences, especially some of the nocturnal visits, and I'm planning to do quite a lot more of that now. In 2025 as a record, it's June, 2025. I've recorded quite a lot of audio already this year for season three of the podcast.

 I am quite excited. I've spent already, I've spent a large amount of time in tears to National Park in Woodland, and that has been an incredible situation. Something I probably never would've done unless I was doing the podcast,  it's been absolutely wonderful.

But I will share that with you. I. Next year, as I say, it's the middle of summer at the moment. I have a lot to do. I am planning to go up to the oil now for a few weeks in the summer up in Halligan and Basar button, so plenty more summer audio From there, hopefully, who knows what's up there in the summer and in the autumn.

I'm planning to spend at least a couple of weeks up at the same location . Also, hopefully by the time you hear this, I will have a driving license, which has taken a massive toll on my mental health over the course of the spring. I've been going to the lessons and you know. During the old theory test here in Sweden, it's been, uh, it's been such a bummer, but hopefully, like I say, by the time you hear this, I've got the license under my belt.

I might even advocate at this stage, and that will allow me certainly in 2026 to get into some fantastic, really, really remote areas after species I'm really interested in here in Sweden and hopefully. Over the places like the mountains in Norway, maybe along the coast of Norway and further north in Sweden.

So there's a lot to be excited about  but for the moment, guys, thank you very, very, very much. Now as the finale, so to speak. So I thought I'd share with you just a little bit of summer audio, very relaxed, bit of audio, a nice sound magazine from July, 2024 on the island, the in VA button.

Have a listen to this. This is a recording in summer in Northern Sweden.

 Now welcome to another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics, and we're gonna be taking a backseat here and just relaxing. And we're going to be listening to some random recordings recorded in July, 2024 from the island of Halligan, which is located on the coast of Vast Button in Northern Sweden.

Now, as always, in July, 2024, I visited the island for a number of weeks. And collected a large amount of audio quite often while leaving gear out passively quite often, actively recording. Now, the end result of this naturally was I had a large amount of audio, and I'm gonna dip into those audio files now and share some of them with you.

Some wonderful, wonderful recordings from an incredibly quiet location. It's fantastic up there. You never know what you're gonna get in the summer and when you get back up, maybe a breeding species that you didn't expect. Or just maybe a few birds around that you didn't expect. But it changes every year.

You know, you never know what's gonna be breeding on such a small island, and each year it changes very, very slightly. So as I say, I'm just gonna dip into the audio now and we're gonna have a nice random sound selection of bird sounds from the island. Now I'm gonna start you off with a particularly relaxing piece of audio.

Very much the signature sound of the island, and that is common goal. An Arctic turn. Also in the background here, you're gonna hear a singing wood pigeon. Just a lovely calming sound. And I suppose in some people's ear, common goal might sound kind of raucous, but they breed on the island good numbers. And it's the sound I associate with Northern Sweden, as is the sound of Arctic turn.

So this is about three minutes, 15 seconds long. It's a wonderful soundscape. Have a listen folks.

Now. Next up we're gonna segue into a shorter recording of Arctic. Turn the calls of these species. Listen in the background here for the single high-pitched call of common Sandpiper. Also a very common species on the island in the summer.

Now next for you. I have a very nice recording and it's a dawn recording, and in the background here you're gonna hear the wonderful song of Common Blackboard. It's such a beautiful song and it provides a wonderful backdrop here. It's also displaying common goal as usual the cause of Arctic turn. And then at the end of the recording, the wonderful piping display of common green shank.

Now, common green shank breeds on the island. They usually have two pairs on the oil and that's pretty constant over the last 10 years or so. But I never tire of hearing this. A wonderful piping display call. Have a listen.

There was so many sounds on the island in the summer, and I generally go up there for three to four weeks, and it takes about a week generally to relax, just to get, you know, used to the quiet up there. Get used to the fact that I don't have to go to work every day, and I just love that period of deep relaxation that comes after about a week or two when you really kind of just get into things and get into the rhythm of the islands.

And one of the sounds I love the most comes at dawn and it is the Dawn Song of Common Crane. Now here in this recording, you're gonna hear a typical dawn chorus on the island in July. Chaffing singing black had golds in the background, gray tit calling wood pigeon in song, and red breasted ganzer flying by the island.

So many of them up there, they breed in good numbers, and then you will have the trumpeting, the blast of common crane. I. Giving the Dawn call an absolutely wonderful sound, very much an iconic sound of Northern Sweden. This is Common Crane at Halligan.

Now I ain't quite used to Northern Sweden now. I spent a lot of time up there in the summer over the last 10, 15 years. But there's certain sounds you just never get used to in the summer. And some of the breathing species we get on the island are quite wonderful. And once again, I just wanna come back to the Arctic turn kind of common goal combination.

It's such a wonderful soundscape. The sound of Ganza is going by this white, white tails, but also her listen for the calls of a hooper swan. We are very lucky there. We have a pair of breeding just around the corner in a small bay. A couple of piping calls from the species here. But generally speaking, this is.

Pretty much the typical soundscape on the island in the summer, common goals, and Arctic turns once again.

A short recording next, and it is of Eurasian curlew. It is a species that breeds around vast botin in fairly good numbers. It's getting scatterer, but it's still a fairly healthy population up there, thankfully. And also in July, from mid-July onwards, we start to get birds passing on passage. Sometimes small family groups just moving around, which could be local breeders, but definitely on occasions we get large flux of birds moving down the coast.

And it's a very, very special sound. This is a very brief recording of calling Eurasian Curlew in the evening at Halle Garn on fast button.

Now I've asked Botten, being northern Sweden, you do get some specialist northern species, and I've become so familiar with the species. I've actually forgotten. It's a bit of a specialized species in the European kind of context in summer, and the species is so common, I forget about it sometimes. And I have a lovely recording of field Fair for you now, and we have a paired in the garden, outside the cabin, and I made this recording of a scolding bird at about 20 minutes before midnight.

One night, had the Sennheiser array just out in the garden. And there's a wonderful backdrop here, black ke golds, common golds and green chank and other species, and over it all, you can hear this wonderful feel fair, just scolding away and even giving a bit of chatter as it just gives out at night, as it gets dark.

Doesn't really get dark up there in fairness, but it's kind of dusky around 20 to 12 for a little while, for a couple hours, and the bird was very, very vocal at that point. And I kind of forget sometimes just because the species is so common in one place, it doesn't mean it's common elsewhere. And the fact that this is July recording makes it a bit more special.

So does this field fair scolding outside our cabin in the middle of July, 2024?

Now next up a wonderful recording and the main species here is green shank. You have the calls, the fly calls of the species, and also a bit of display from the species. Also hear are some wonderful calls in the background. You've got wood sandpiper passages just beginning in mid-August and some black had a gold.

So once again, this is green shank. Listen for the fly calls and also a little bit of display here. A wonderful recording. Have a listen.

Now the last recording in this short sound magazine. It is of a very, very common species. Quite normally, I kind of look for a bit of a special species or sound, but I love this recording and it is actually a pair of white, white tails feeding new fledglings on the lawn. One day we cut the grass, we just trim the back, we, we cut it with a up there.

We don't really want to mow anything, but as soon as we cut the grass down with a side, these white, white tails appeared. And these fledglings that were just out still had quite short tails and. The adults started to feed the young, and they were feeding on the lawn, obviously, where I'd cut the grass. So I decided to let these 10 hoses out right beside them, and I got an absolutely wonderful recording.

So this is a pair of white whitetails feeding fledglings just after the birds have left the nest, and it's a quite wonderful recording. Have a list of this folks.

So there you go guys. That's the sounds of somewhere from a very small island on the coast of VAs button. In northern Sweden.





So that was July recording in 2024. It was a wonderful time, and it's a time when me and my wife just go up to the island and relax. I quite often just leave recorders out for long periods of time now, 2024. It was a time when I was very, very busy. I was trying to get to as many reserves as possible, and because it's the last episode of the season, it's a bit like eating a box of chocolates.

Really. You leave your favorite suite to last, and I tried to actually save one of my favorite sale magazines for you guys, listeners for the last episode. 

And I'll just get straight into the Sound magazine. This was a wonderful, wonderful night in the field. This is nocturnal recording at Santa Mar Reserve in Sweden.

 Welcome once again, folks to another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics. On this occasion, the venue was Santa Ma Reserve, one of my favorite places to record. And on the 26th of May, 2024, it was just after midnight when I stepped off the bus and made my way into the reserve. Now it was a lovely sultry evening.

There wasn't a drop of wind. You could hear a pin drop as usual. And the first bird I came across in a bit of meadow. Was a night singing cock wind chat, and that was pitch dark and I couldn't see the bird, which made it very, very easy to actually get the microphones to Sennheiser array right up beside the bird.

And then I just sat back and made a long recording. So this is a bit of a treat. It's an absolutely beautiful recording. This is a male wind chat singing at night at Santa Ma Reserve in Sweden.

So I think you'll agree that's an absolutely wonderful recording, and it was quite incredible to just sit there in the darkness and listen to this bird. Maybe 10 or 15 meters away from my position. Just singing its heart out in the darkness was fantastic. In the background there it is common gold, barnacle goose.

It's a large gold species, which I think is greater black backed, distant eer, probably about one and a half kilometers away from the microphone, and also some overlying gray here. So quite a wonderful, wonderful scene. It was still pitch dark when I made my way onto the coast at the reserve, and I had a good look around.

It was still pitch dark and there was so much going on and I decided to head forward the meadows. And when I got there, I discovered a pair of common ground quite close to a small area where I could get a microphone. It's up on a bit of higher ground. And what I did was I just positioned my mic, sat down, took my time.

And just sat back and enjoyed the scene. It was quite wonderful. It was Barnal Goose in the area. A lot of lap wing calls either were displaying offshore in the distance Blackboard were beginning to sing. There was Skylar over the meadows, so lesser white throat cuckoo, and also the call of Snipe and other species, such as common goal insects were starting to get active.

There were buzzing around, and you can hear that in this recording. And eventually I got some lovely calls of Common Crane from the pair, which were probably about 50, 60 meters from the microphones. So I'm gonna play that for you now. This is common crane and lap wing along with other species at Sand Mar Reserve.

I.

Now Sand Mar Reserve in common with a lot of reserves here in Sweden is really well managed. There's a lot of nice trails. It's quite flat. It's quite safe. Now, the habitat here is very varied. There's some lovely woodland habitat. There's coastal meadows, there's coastal sites. It's full of avoiders, quite often in the spring and the autumn.

And the result is that you can visit this place two weeks apart in spring and have a completely different soundscape in many ways. Now, Santa Maria is ideal for night recording. The trails are very flat, generally quite safe. You're not likely to turn your ankle, and that's a big boon when you're out in the pitch.

Darkness. Also, there's absolutely tons of birds in this place and I had another species in mind when I went out there on this occasion, and I made my way out for that next, and the species is common rain plover. Now, I had stake the place out over the previous couple of weeks and I knew where some birds were present.

And basically what I did was I carefully placed my mics in the area where I knew the birds were. And again, just sat back, took about 45 minutes an hour just to record. And eventually I got some lovely recordings. Of common ring plover. Once again in absolute pitch darkness. I could hear the birds. I could just about see them through the binoculars and in the end, the birds performed beautiful.

Now, there's a few other species in this recording as well. Once again, you have lap wing overhead calling Skylark over the meadows and calling Red Shank. But the whole thing makes for a wonderful recording, so I'll play that for you now. This is a very nice recording of common Ring plover. Have a listen folks.

Now I have something a little bit different for you. Once again, it's a mammal species. And it's a species I come across regularly at night. It's road deer. Now. Road deer is very, very common in Sweden and they can scare the life out of you. Quite often, I'm just wandering around in the woods at night or along a trail and I'll disturb road deer and the bark can be quite loud.

Now I managed to get this recording just a little bit after Dawn on this particular date, and it's quite nice. So you're gonna hear a little bit of the Don Curtis at Santa Mar Reserve. I'll run through some species with you after the recording. We'll list now for a lovely stro of cuckoo right at the end of this recording.

Now lovely to get that bit of cuckoo right at the end of that recording, but there's so much going on there. It's just right in the middle of the Don Chorus. There's three Pitt there in the background. Victory Warbler Garden, warbler Black cap calling. Gray tit is calling Great Spotted Woodpecker. Black Bird song is calling Common Turn Blue tit.

Spotify catcher call hooded crow, gray Herring call, and also wood pigeon towards the end. So an awful lot to unravel air, but all things considered an absolutely wonderful soundscape. Now, the next recording I have for you is Skylar, or predominantly Skylar. Over the meadows quite near the coast at the site and also in the background here you have the wonderful kind of bubbling calls of Northern lap wing, and that's one of my favorite calls here in the spring.

In the background here, you're also gonna hear cuckoo, common blackboard, gray lag goose, noisy buggers. As usual, the call of common snipe. You also have barnacle goose, either far offshore, just displaying. There's a nice bit of audio of common red shank. And also calling Herding Goal. Again, this is more of a soundscape than anything else, but pretty much all the way through, you will hear Skylark in full song just over the grasslands.

Have a listen.

Next up is a lovely recording of a singing tree Pivot. Santa Ma Reserve is an absolutely incredible place for the species. There's several males in territory every single spring, and I love getting out to record them. Now in the background here, you will hear lots of birds like common goal at the start.

Things like hooded crow, regular woodland species. Well, a little bit more unusually here. There's actually a pair of goose on. They're flying around over the woodland. I think they're probably nest respecting and they're giving their flight calls as they do so also something to list now here for. Is stock of quite a nice song to hear in Woodland in the early spring, so we'll see if you can pick that out, folks.

As I say, this is an absolutely wonderful recording with three Pivot giving song. First thing in the morning at Santa Mar Reserve in Suite I.

And so we've come to the end of another sound magazine, and I'm gonna leave you with a lovely dawn soundscape here. It's a very common species, predominantly a first, it's common chaffing, a bird giving song from Woodland. Once again, there's an lot of woodland species in the background, but towards the end of this recording, which is four or five minutes long, there's some beautiful stross from common cuckoo.

Quite often a difficult bird to get close to. Well, I've generally found if you actually stake these birds out, you'll find they kind of return to the same areas periodically. And I've always found with common cuckoo, the best thing to do is use patience. So just leave your microphones down in an area you know the bird returns to and wait, and quite often with a bit of patience, you'll get some lovely recordings of the species.

Now, obviously, common cuckoo for the sound recorder is a very iconic species. It's an instantly identifiable song by almost everybody, including Longboarders. So when you start recording often, you're quite keen to get recordings of the species, and I was quite happy with this recording. I'm gonna play it for you now.

So it starts off as chaffing in the woodland, and I got lucky with this one, folks. The bird just flew in and started to sing towards the end. So you're gonna hear a nice bit of cuckoo action towards the end. Have a listen.

So there you go. That's the audio from the trip to Santa Ma Reserve on the 24th of May, 2024. And to be honest, folks, I had so much audio from that night and morning that I really struggled to actually get it all into this sound magazine. So I'll probably publish a few files in a different cell magazine at some point in the future.

But the main takeaway for me was I got about 30 really high quality files that night and morning. It's well worth the effort to get out at night just away from noise pollution. It's so much easier to record when you don't have to deal with noise from cars, dogs, and other human anthropogenic noise, and it's really worth the effort.

I think the sound recordings here speak for themselves, as you can hear. It just makes life so much easier when you don't have to deal with that. So for the moment, I'd like to thank you all for listening once again to wild bird acoustics. That's all from me here at the podcast, and we'll see you again on the next sound magazine.

Thanks for listening.

So there you go folks. It's a wrap. That's season two in the bag, as they say. And once again, I'd like to thank you all the listeners for listening. Again, I'd like to thank everybody that came on for interviewers and  giving up their free time for contributing to the podcast. It's been absolutely wonderful talking to you guys.

It's been an incredible year, there's so much to be thankful for. I'm thankful that the podcast just pushed me out  into the field to record all these things. , I'm thankful for everything I came across over the course of the year. It's been an absolutely incredible year and I've experienced and learned so much was, I've been out into the field also.

 It's been absolutely wonderful to hear that some of the listeners are now starting their own knock make projects or getting out the field record for themselves, and the other listeners are just enjoying listening to the podcast and relaxing to it.

What more can I say? We'll see you for season three on New Year's Day 2026. Take it easy folks, and thanks for listening once again to 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.