Early Spring in Primeval Swedish Forest; The Tyresta Files #1

Woodland habitat is something I have wanted to drill down into for many years now and Sweden is blessed with some truly wonderful forest habitat. After a great deal of careful thought and deliberation over the course of the winter, I eventually decided to drill down into the sounds of woodland over the course of early spring. A major field recording project was planned and executed as a result and it proved a truly magical experience. Tyresta National Park boasts one of the largest coniferous old-growth forests in southern Sweden and extends over a vast area of over 5,000 hectares. Stands of ancient Scots Pine dominate the high interior, some of the trees being aged at over 400 years old. Norwegian Spruce dominates the lower ground in the park, whilst deciduous tree species like Aspen, Birch, Beech and Alder also contribute to the diverse woodland. The ancient old growth woodland is an incredibly diverse habitat for all kinds of flora and fauna and it is filled with birds. In the spring of 2024 I simply lost myself along moss and lichen strewn trails in this wonderful forest, field recording all I came across. It was a truly a magical experience. The park is wonderfully quiet as a general rule and a sound recorders dream to work within. The first few weeks inside the park proved an unforgettable experience as it slowly revealed its secrets to me. By means of active and passive recording, I built up an wonderful library of recordings. In this episode, I share the beginnings of my experiences, during the early spring period  at the park, in 2025.

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, season three, episode one. Here we go again, folks. I'm not sure I ever thought I would get to a season three. I want to thank all of the listeners for their support in seasons one and two. It's been quite a ride., I can just give you a quick update as to where the podcast is at now at this stage.

So season one, I think we ended up with about 200 downloads per episode, which apparently is very, very reasonable, actually quite good for a new podcast. But season two things really started to gain a bit of traction and I think I have to thank the listeners, all you guys out there for that. I think some of the episodes now were up to five, 600 downloads and that is absolutely fantastic.

So. Here's hoping in season three it just keeps going, and a little call out to action maybe for all you guys Just keeps spreading the word. I think this thing is actually spreading by word of mouth and I'd like to thank you all for it. I've got a wonderful, wonderful season set up for you. I will just outline some of my thoughts on season three. I had a terrible time in season two trying to get all of the audio together. It was a massive amount of work. So for season three, what I've decided to do is. Use passive recording a bit more than I have done in the past, and that has kind of eased the burden of getting out into the field.

Not that I wasn't out in the field an awful lot. I was out constantly during 2020 4, 25, and collected a huge amount of audio, mostly actually this year with a Tinga problem. But over the course of the year, I also decided to utilize SM mini E recorders by wildlife acoustics quite a bit more than I have done in the past. I got a couple of new devices over the course of the winter, and these have been an absolute.

Boone over the course of the last year or so, they've been quite incredible. I put them down for some very, very difficult species. I've found them tremendously useful for getting audio of, you know, species that are very, very difficult to get close to. All will be revealed of course in season three, but suffice to say, have some wonderful, wonderful audio for you

Now, I'm not gonna give you too many spoilers as regards season three, but I will say that one of the things I did do was drill down into certain environments and one of those environments is Woodland.

Now woodland habitat is something I've wanted to actually get stuck into for a number of years, and in 2025 in early spring, I decided to take on a field recording project at National Park.

The  📍 place is absolutely enormous and the habitat's incredible. So you have coniferous, forest, spruce, Scots, pine, various other pine species. You have stands of deciduous trees, some beautiful stands of beach tree in particular, some lovely rivers, streams. Wetlands created by European beaver, which were an absolute eye-opener.

So many different habitats. Wonderful freshwater lake habitat as well. I'll be getting into all of it during season three, but that's where we're gonna start the podcast, the early spring section of that field recording project at Tears to National Park.



And with these sound magazines folks, I'm gonna be giving you quite a lot of these longer sound magazines. I got so much audio on these field recording projects that I thought just to kind of keep it all kind of together, have a nice narrative and have a nice flow to it all. I'll give you 50, 60 minutes sound magazines in some of the episodes in season three.

I really do hope you enjoy this. As always, folks, if you have any feedback at all, any questions, anything like that, get in contact with me here at Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com, all lowercase. We also have a mailing list as always, for anybody who wants to get onto that. Again, contact at wild bird acoustics@gmail.com.

So without any further ado, let's get on with the episode.

This is the first sound magazine from Tier National Park early Spring. Enjoy this folks.

 Welcome everybody to Wild Bird Acoustics. This is the first sound magazine concerning a major field project, which I undertook in 2025 at Tourist National Park. Now, Terra National Park is located just southwest of Stockholm City. It's an absolutely incredible place. A massive forest, a massive area of pristine Swedish forest and woodland habitat is something I had wanted to get into.

More extensively over the last few years and in early spring 2025, I'd thought about this quite a lot. Over the previous winter, I decided to concentrate on Woodland and tourist, and National Park was a no-brainer. Arabia, it's just pristine, huge. So much to discover. I had several species in mind that I wanted to record.

But this pretty much turned into a voyage of discovery really. I got out there at dawn every morning, every weekend, pretty much for two months, and it was an incredible experience, and I want to share the audio with you guys, the listeners here at the podcast. Now, March is quite early here in Sweden, and most migrants don't even begin to return until mid-April or even later.

Quite often, well into May. And what that meant was I could focus my efforts on resident species that I was interested in, and the soundscapes at this time of the year were fantastic because they were less cluttered with less going on in the background. And that is not to say they are less interesting.

The Woodland in March is an absolutely incredible place, and I'm going to concentrate on March in this sound magazine. Now. When I first got to the park in early March, my main target species was black woodpecker. Now for various reasons, I decided to cut the area down to a small part of the park, the northeast corner, as it were, but it's still a very, very large area.

But I figured then rather than spread myself too thin, I could concentrate on one area of a few square miles, drill down into it, get to know it, and find the species I was looking for within that section of forest. Now over the first couple of weekends. I could hear black woodpecker in various places in the forest, but it soon became apparent to me that there were two pairs in my study area and I began to focus on one pair in particular that were frequenting a large stand of beach trees.

Now, I had wonderful success at this location. You're gonna hear a lot of sound files from it. I put down SM mini recorders and spent a lot of time there, actively recording. But the first recording I'm gonna play for you. Took me about two weeks to get, it's a very short recording of a singing Black woodpecker, an adult male in full display, and this is recorded with an SM mini recorder, which I left out for 10 days at the site.

Have a listen to this, folks. This is singing Black Woodpecker.

Now, once I had decided to concentrate on the pear in the beach grove, as I call it, I spent a lot of time there early in the mornings, especially in the first couple of weekends, and I decided to put down an SM mini recorder. And this resulted in some quite amazing audio. I'm going to play a recording now of the Clee calls of black woodpecker recorded close to the SME recorder, which I collected about 10 days later.

Now, at this stage, I had found a nest. I was absolutely delighted to do that. And it happened one morning and I was out and I just noticed a female bird sitting quietly on a tree, one of the beast trees, and I thought it was quite odd. She was watching me quite intently. And then after about 10 minutes of being motionless, she just popped her head into the tree and I saw some wood chips coming out and I moved my position very, very slightly and realized she was excavating a nest.

And that was fantastic news for me. It meant I had a location, put down some SM e recorders and get some wonderful audio. And boy did that work out well for me. You're gonna hear the clay calls now of black woodpecker recorded passively with an SM mini recorder just to avoid disturbance to these birds.

This is a wonderful recording. It's quite quiet at this location, and that was one of the major bos. It quickly became apparent to me that this was a dream location to do some field recording in. There was never anybody around early in the morning, in the early spring. In the background here, quite distant, great spotted woodpeckers, blue tits, great tits, Eurasian Siskin, and even a calling willow tit, as well as Eurasian nut hatch.

Have a listen folks, the clay calls of black woodpecker.

Black Woodpecker gave a number of calls. They're vocally very diverse, and one of the call types I was after was the excitement call of the species. I'm gonna play a short recording now made with a tinga probla of the excitement call. And it's a wonderful, wonderful noise, but like I say, a very, very short recording just to get your ear in on this is the excitement call of Black Woodpecker once again made at the Beach Grove on the 9th of March, 2025.

Now it was lovely to hit the ground running with Black Woodpecker and RIFing you off. I was getting nice audio. The next recording I have for you was made with a Tinga problem actively recorded. And on this occasion I just caught some excitement calls followed by the flight call of the bird as it moved away.

And then some Clee calls as the male bird called from a beach tree. Have a listen, quite a short recording again with three call types. This is Black woodpecker.

On the morning of the 9th of March, I was at the Beach Grove early and I quickly located both male and female Black Woodpecker. They were both loosely in the area, and later that morning I was just sitting there with my Pella. And the birds started to chase each other through the woodlands. I had the tinga on them all of the time, and eventually they settled down and I was absolutely gobsmacked.

To witness the birds' mating and field record the whole event, what you're gonna hear in the next recording is quite wonderful. Its excitement calls from male and female black woodpecker. You can actually hear them flying through the trees. And eventually mating. I was absolutely delighted to get this recording.

This is the mating of black woodpeckers on the 9th of March at National Park in Sweden.

So I very much had hit the ground running, and what a wonderful recording that is. I'm going to be playing you an awful lot of Black Woodpecker audio in these episodes at Terra National Park, and some of it is quite fantastic. For now, though. We're gonna move along to some other species that are recorded in March at the site.

First up, a lovely recording of cult hit singing in some light rain early on the morning of the 9th of March. A distant Eurasian nut hatch in the background as they always seem to be at this site. Have a listen. This is cult hit singing in Lorraine.

Now after a long, dark cold winter here in Sweden, it's wonderful to be back out in the field. Sound recording. And in early spring I spent a lot of time recording pretty much everything. I came across. Lots of common species and none of the songs. In my opinion are as beautiful as common blackbird. I found these two birds singing early in the morning at knee forests in the National Park and just took time to take a recording.

In the background, there's rain blue tit the lovely backdrop of drumming. Great spot woodpecker and some wood pigeon as well. But the main subject here is the wonderful song of Common Blackbird early in the morning.

Next up your Asian nut hatch, a noise here in the background from somebody talking on a mobile phone, but it's not too intrusive and it's still a very nice recording. Some wonderful calls here from Eurasian Nut Hatch again at Ne Forest. This time a little bit later in the morning at about 11:00 AM this is the calls of Eurasian Nut Hatch.

Now my process at the park was to traverse the park. I had various walks I used to do on each visit and just stop and record whatever I came across on this occasion. A little bit later in March, I came across as singing Goldcrest. And grab a recording with the Tinga Pala in the background here you can hear nut hatch as usual, some wood pigeon, some chatter, Urian siskin, and an early song Thrush, which had just returned to territory.

But the main species here, the Focus Bird, is the Song of Goldcrest. A wonderful, wonderful song. Have a listen.

Early in the spring, in the woodland, it's time for woodpeckers and one of the species, uh, wanted to get plenty of recordings of we're a great spotted woodpeckers and the drumming of the species is very much sound of early spring. It's quite a wonderful sound. And here's a wonderful recording of a drumming great spot at the woodpecker.

In the background is rain Trilling ram. At the start is blackbirds chaffing calls and song calls of hoffen and other common species. But quite a wonderful recording of the drumming of Grace Bottled Woodpecker in Woodland, Swedish, Woodland in early spring. Have a listen, folks. This is about three minutes long.

Another recording now. Great Spotted Woodpecker. This time a feeding bird, giving kick calls. And this is the typical call of the species in Woodland at all times of the year in the background as Eurasian Siskin calls wood pigeon in song, cold hit song, and also some hooded crow and blue tit, but a lovely recording, quite short of the kick calls of great spotted woodpecker.

Now one of my favorite species next half inch, a wonderful, wonderful finch, the largest of the finches here in Europe. And I love these high calls. You're gonna hear some displaying half inch now recorded quite close to Lake ne forests and early in the morning at this site, they were often present. I've got some wonderful recordings.

This one with the Tinga parabola In the background again, you will hear Siskin wood pigeon singing cult hit great spotted woodpecker drumming as always, blue tit and hooded crow, but an absolutely wonderful recording of half inch in the Woodlands. First light early in the morning. Enjoy this folks.

Now one of the species I spent an awful lot of time with, over 2025 interiors the. Was Eurasian Jay. They're quite incredible vocalists and I really started to appreciate them. A few weeks into the project, I'm gonna be playing plenty of audio of this species and I don't wanna shy away from playing longer periods of audio if I have to on this occasion.

This comes from the beach Grove, and I came from an SM mini passive recording. Now what's going on in this recording is a large group of Eurasian Jay moving through the forest, giving various vocalizations. It's quite wonderful. There's a fantastic backdrop here, not Hatch, Chaffin, blue tip Siskin and others, but the sounds from this group of Jay are absolutely remarkable.

It's about five minutes long. It's a fantastic soundscape. And I just wanted to play this in its entirety for you guys, haven't listened to this. This is a wonderful scene from tears to National Forest in mid-March 2025.

Next up is lesser spotted woodpecker, another woodpecker species. I was very keen to record in early spring at National Park. In this recording, you're gonna hear some quiet calls from a female lesser spotted woodpecker just quietly feeding away in the woodland in the background, you're gonna have Robin singing.

You have nut hatch calls, and some chaffing rain, and an overlying northern raven. And just at the end of this recording, you will hear me speaking into the parabola, just making a note of the species and what's going on in the recording. I thought I'd leave it in. It just gives you a little insight into my process.

So when I'm out in the field actively recording, I like to speak at the end of the recordings I've made just to put in any relevant notes species what sex the bird is and that kind of thing. And that all goes into my sound notes. And I thought it'd be just interesting for you guys to actually just hear me do this.

And that's typically what I do at the end of every recording I make in the field when I'm out actively recording. I think most recorders probably do this anyway. Back to the recording. Less A Spotted Woodpecker, a female bird at a place called the R DeMar in National Park on the 16th of March, 2025.

That's lesser Spider woodpecker again, female.

We will stay on lesser Spotted Woodpecker. The next recording is a longer recording, once again, four minutes plus, and it's quite wonderful. It concerns drawing male lesser spotted woodpecker. Now in the background here you can hear a great spotted woodpecker again, Northern Raven singing ran throughout and also interestingly.

Jay mimicking Goshawk, Northern goshawk that is and common buzzard. You're gonna hear both species in the background. It's not what it appears to be. It's Eurasian Jay mimicking both species of Raptor. This is something I will come back to in future episodes of these sound files. Also in the background here you have tree creeper and Siskin, so quite a lot of interest to listen to here in the background.

But basically what you have is two male less spotted woodpeckers at R Ma, wonderful area within the national park, and a fantastic area for less spotted woodpecker. In the end, bird comes quite close. You can hear the drumming of the species some calls as well, but it's mainly drumming. So the drumming of Less the Spotted Woodpecker is quite easy to tell.

Apart from that of Great Spotted Woodpecker, it's generally of a higher pitch and also they drum with much more intensity. The drums are closer together and it sounds completely different. You'll pick that up in this recording. So they really are furiously busy little birds, and the drumming is quite a fantastic noise.

Something it's well worth to get your ear on. I noticed it's quite a scar species in parts of the uk. And many boarders are probably out there looking for it in the spring, so I hope this recording helps. Wonderful recording here of Drumming Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers at Tears to National Park on the 21st of March, 2025.

I.

A fantastic woodlands and they're absolutely wonderful and I hope you enjoyed it. I'm gonna move on to another species now, red Cross Bill. I have tons of audio of Red Cross Bill moving down the coast of Sweden, particularly from Fasta Bot in northern Sweden on migration. But what I don't have is a lot of audio of singing birds in woodland habitat.

And that was one of my main targets this spring. I wanted to get some decent audio of Red Cross Bill on the breeding grounds. Now, early on I got some success. It wasn't too bad, and this is one of the first recordings that got of Red Cross Bill within the park Boundaries. You're gonna hear some excitement calls here of Red Cross.

Bill also in the background here, bul, have a listen to this folks. This is calls from Red Cross Bill.

We will move straight into another recording of Red Crossville. Now also on the 9th of March, 2025, again close to the beach grove. You can hear my feed shift in this recording actually when a black woodpecker calls, and that sometimes happens to me when I'm recording one thing and then I hear something else.

I also really want to record. Happens quite a lot. What can you do about it? In this recording, you will hear a Red Cross bill, as I say, regular calls and a couple of excitement calls as well. Cult is singing in the background, and as mentioned, the clay halls of Black Woodpecker have a listen.

Another recording now of Red Cross Bill and in these early weeks I was just kind of mapping the area out, but I was very, very happy to locate at least two pairs of Red Cross Bill. And on this occasion, on the 9th of March, I got something approaching a little bit of song in this recording. Was very, very happy with this at the time.

Ran in the background, the tongues of Northern Raven overhead, and this begins with the calls of Red Cross Bill and then the birds settles down and starts to give a little bit of song from the treetops. As I say, at the time, I was very, very happy with this, but I was more happy, really, that I'd located two pairs and it was something for me to work with.

In the coming weeks, which I did more of that, as I say in future episodes. But for now, we've just listened to a nice recording of Red Cross Bill from Tears to National Park on the 9th of March, 2025.

Next up a recording of some siskin chatter in the woodlands and some tits here in the background, and quite often one recording leads to another. And if you listen carefully here you can hear the harsh calls of Willow tit. Which was a species I was targeting in early March, and this led me to get a recording of the species in this area a little bit later.

But first up, we listened to the chatter of Eurasian Siskin in the tree tops at National Park.

The next species I have for you is your Asian tree. Creeper, a very beautiful song. It's easily overlooked. It sounds a little bit like willow warbler, but when you get your ear on it, you'll start to hear it absolutely everywhere. A very common species that tears the national Park. A lovely recording here taken at a place called Gammel Strum.

There's a lovely bit of ambiance here from a nearby stream and also in the background, some common red Paul flying overhead, but the main species here, the focus species, again, with the Tinga parabola is the song of your Eurasian tree. Creeper. Have a listen.

Willow hit was a species I really wanted to record at Tier National Park. Quite a scarce breeder at the site. It's quite local and had booked quite a bit of effort in to get the species and the reason I wanted to record the species had plenty of calls again from Northern Sweden, but I do not have the song, or at least I didn't up until this spring.

In this recording, you're gonna hear my first recording of Willow tit singing a little bit Distantly in the forest with the Tinga Pbla wood Pigeon siskin in the background. But the beautiful mournful song of Willow tit here ringing out in the distance at tears, the National Park.

Now a little bit of effort. I got closer to this bird. Had to hike right into the woods off the path, which can be quite difficult. It's very dense, somewhat as forest, but it was worth the effort just to get a little bit of closer audio. The bird wasn't singing constantly. It was quite difficult, but eventually I managed this recording of singing Willow tit at Closer Range.

We'll have a listen to that now. Again, Willow tit in song, a very local species around Stockholm. I was very happy with this recording.

Now time to wrap up the sound magazine. I think I'm going to leave you with a lovely recording. I was at ML strumming and I came across this ran in song and started to record. As often happens, other species chimed in and eventually I got a lovely recording with the ambience of the stream In the background.

I was looking for whitethroat, a dipper, no joy in that particular day. That was a target species as well. This spring, that is a species I will be returning to as we have more episodes of tears, the national park for you. But as I say, I'm gonna leave you with this, a wonderful recording of Northern Rayon and Ren in song Also in the background here, listen for the calls of Jay.

Siskin and singing blue t. A wonderful recording.

So there you go. That's Tier National Park. The first episode, a major field recording project I took on in March and April of 2025. It's an incredible place, a very kind of target rich environment. There's so much to record at the site, and quite often I came offsite with 40 or 50 recordings on any given morning.

And once I got the passive recorders down, there was much more audio as well. So I have a stack of audio to get through some wonderful, wonderful moments and all will be revealed as we travel forward in the third season of Wild Bird acoustics. Woodland truly is a wonderful, wonderful place. It's becoming very rare these days to find patches of pristine woodland.

I'm very lucky to have tears that close to Stockholm City, and I wanted to make the most of that and just get out there and do as much recording as possible in March and April and. It was an absolute pleasure to get out there and record quite often common species, but I also got some very special audio of a number of target species as well, so more to be revealed.

There's plenty more to come from the side in season three. So once again, as always, thank you everybody for tuning in to Wild Bird Acoustics. It's very, very much appreciated. I hope you have enjoyed the podcast on this occasion. And for now, that's all for me, your host, Alan Dalton, and we'll see you here at Wild Bird Acoustics next time.

 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.