Beneath the Blossoms; The Sandemar Files #1

In this episode I present a feature length sound magazine, put together with audio from a field recording project  carried out at Sandemar Reserve in Sweden. In May 2025, I decided to concentrate heavily on this incredible site, using both active and passive methods of recording. A great deal of time was spent at the site at a time when the reserve is at it's busiest. Sandemar Reserve is an area that I have become extremely familiar with over the years and I have now birded regularly at the site for over twenty years. Over that entire period, the site has continually thrown up  surprises. From my experiences here, I knew that a focused field recording project though the month of May would result in a large amount of remarkable audio.  Over the course of a month I visited the reserve many times, greatly enjoying the sounds of this incredible area, which is blessed with a multitude of different habitats. As migrants began to stream through the area and breeding species began to take up territories, the soundscape became more and more varied. Some rather special local species were among them, along with a few surprises. The more I drilled down, the more I uncovered...

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 yet another episode here at Wild Bird Acoustics, and it's wonderful to be back.

Now over the course of 2025, I had to put my thinking cap on as it were, and decide which direction I wanted the podcast to go in. And what I decided over the course of the winter was to undertake a couple of major sound recording or field recording projects in the spring of 2025 and utilize active recording and passive recording.

And that worked out really well for me over the course of the spring. Now one of the places I decided to work with was Tears to National Park. You've already heard a long sound magazine. From there. And one of the other locations I decided to really drill down into and have a really close look at was Sand Marr Reserve in Sweden, a place I'm extremely familiar with.

Now, the reason I chose Sand Marr is a, as I say, I'm extremely familiar with the area, but there's also still areas I hadn't actually really explored in depth. Now, another factor in my decision was the fact that Santa Mar Reserve is located along the coastline and each spring.

Despite what you might think, the birds change quite a lot. So some years, for example, you'll find things like Roy Ex singing the next year. None at all, and it's quite typical of the site really. You may have a fantastic season for say, three Pitt one year with 8, 9, 10 males singing at the site. The next year, there might only be a couple of males, but it will be made up for by the presence of another species, a common red start, red breasted fly catcher or something like that.

So it's something of an unknown, and that's why I absolutely love the area now. I also knew I hadn't really got to the bottom of this venue, and that's why I like to spend so much time there. Like I say, when you're passive recording, it's really good to know an area in detail to know where certain species breed, what's likely to happen at certain times of the year when certain species move through on passage.

And Sandmeyer has it all really deciduous woodland confers woodland. Wetland Meadows with breeding waders. It has a lot of passage, birds, especially waders and Pastor Ryans, and given the right weather there, you never really know what is going to turn up at the site. And that's quite exciting.

It's very, very varied in habitat and that leads to a massive amount of biodiversity, and that's what I was interested in. So that was the reason for concentrating on Sand Mar as one of my premier kind of sites in the spring of 2025. Now here in this episode, I'm gonna be presenting a long sound magazine. You've already heard one, the Tears, the Files, number one in the very first episode of the season, and this is something I feel that will add to the continuity of the podcast.

Nice long single sound magazines. There's going to be several of these in this season and I hope you enjoy them. As always folks, you can drop me some feedback at Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com and let me know what you think of this format. But for now, we're gonna dive straight into it.

This is the Sand DeMar files early spring at Sand DeMar Reserve. Please do enjoy this. There's some wonderful audio here for you all to enjoy.

 Now welcome everybody to another sound magazine here at Wild Bird Acoustics. And in this sound magazine I'm going to be presenting the first of several sound magazine's featuring spring recording at Sand Mar Reserve. Now, sand Marr Reserve is one of my favorite sites here in Stockholm, and in fact, I think if I was tied to just one reserve here around Stockholm City, Santa Mar Reserve would be the reserve that I would pick as my premier site for field recording.

And there are several reasons for that. The main one though, is the kind of different habitats that you get at the site. Now when you first arrive at the site, quite close to the car park, there's a lovely area of woodland, which is fantastic for species, very damp area. It's good for lesser spotted woodpecker, common rose fi, rine, warbler and that kind of thing in May and quite close by, there's a small inlet surrounded by reed beds and that's also excellent as well.

Now further into the reserve, there's plenty of farmland, which is crop fields quite often just cut stubble in the autumn and it's excellent for species like Eurasian Skylark, sometimes Ry neck as well. Further into the reserve, close to the sea, you have these wonderful flooded meadows, which are excellent breeding habitat.

Lots of lap wing breeding there, common red shank, plenty of passage waiters. And you never know what you're gonna get at this site. Quite often there's pivots and other passage migrants in the autumn and in the spring, really, you never know what's going to turn up. It's quite good for the occasional rarity.

Now, further in again, there's some spits of land that ju out into the Bic Sea. Excellent mixed forest and coniferous forest. Very good for species like crested, tit, black woodpecker, wood warbler. A multitude of species really. And once again, because it's coastal in spring especially, you never know what could be arriving along the coastline.

And it's just kind of unexpected kind of element of the place that I really like. And I found that over the years it never really produces the same birds year after year. Although you have regular species at the site, it's also excellent for other species such as firecrest, red breasted, fly catcher, river, warbler, marsh, warbler, bloods, red warbler.

And on any given morning, anything really can turn up and I just love this kind of unexpected nature, the kind of mystery of what might turn up quite often. I just watch the weather before I go out because there's a southeasterly wind in May. You never know what's going to be arriving along the coast on spring passage.

So many, many reasons. It's also excellent in autumn and even in the winter. It's a superb site, so it's an all round site really, and I love to spend time at this reserve as a result. Now there is a road close to the reserve, but I have found getting out very early in the morning or even overnight, produces the goods.

It's a lot quieter there, and really, noise isn't a major problem, the occasional boat passing, that type of thing, but very, very manageable. So what I decided to do this year was spend quite a bit of time in the spring field, recording right through May, and also deploying SM E recorders. And I did several deployments of SM E this year and it really produced goods.

I got some quite wonderful recordings. A few new species as well, all will be revealed in this series of sound magazines. So this is the first installment of field recording at Santa Ma Reserve in 2025. Now, to start things off, I'm going to play you recording of Common Crane, the dawn call, and it's a wonderful, wonderful noise.

One of my favorite species here in Sweden. I never tear up the species. There's an absolutely wonderful backdrop here. It was recorded with an SM Mini, it was a passive deployment. And in the background here, there's some lovely audio of species like Northern Lap Wing. Sny displaying on the ground and also overhead.

This common goal going over calling this red shank, displaying on the meadows some calls of Kute and some distant Arctic turn. But the main species here are bugling common cranes. Have a listen.

Now, the next species I have for you is common cuckoo. Santa Ma Reserve is a superb site for the species and it is a species I want to actually concentrate on this year, and it was one of the species I hope to get good recordings of with these passive recordings with SM mini recorders. Now I've been using the SM Minis an awful lot this year.

I purchased two more over the winter last year and I've been using them passively in various habitats this spring and the results have been quite incredible. Quite eye-opening really. I really didn't expect the audio to be as good, but really if something comes quite close to these recorders, you get excellent recordings as a result.

And that has led to a lot of lovely recordings of species that are often quite difficult to get close to. So I found with pass recording, you can just leave a recorder out for up to a week or more. And come back, collect the recorder, go through the audio, and it really has been a boon in 2025. I'm going to play a lovely recording now of cuckoo in song.

There's a lot of species in the background, as always at Sand Mar barnal, goose and gray, light goose in the distance. Hey, singing black bird, some wood pigeon in the background and the odd yellow hammer in the distance, but very close to the recorder. Singing in the canopy overhead in quite thick forest is common cuckoo.

Very, very distinctive call. I think almost anybody in Europe will be able to identify the species, but I've been delighted to get a number of nice recordings in the spring of 2025. This is common cuckoo.

Now next up is a species I have struggled to record over the past several years, and this is one of my favorite recordings of 2025. The species is Northern Ider. Now I, there's a very difficult species in some ways to record. I've spent so much time on the coastline here trying to record a species, quite often out on the archipelago here in Stockholm.

And quite often the difficulty is the noise from the sea as the waves crash and it can be very, very noisy and drown out the calls of these birds, which display right through the spring here in Sweden now at Sand Ma Reserve. I was out one morning in May and I got very, very close. It was nice and calm.

It was a group of three male elders and one female, and I just sat quietly behind some boulders and eventually the birds moved back in towards the coast where I was sitting. And I finally got the recording I've been waiting for, for several years of either now, in this recording, you're gonna hear the calls of female E as well as displaying males, but the most remarkable part of this recording is the display call.

Of a male rider, and it is an absolutely incredible noise in the background. You can hear some Arctic turns and a distant alarm of song thrush, but there's no mistaking the common idol here. Listen carefully. This is an absolutely wonderful recording and I do hope you enjoy this one

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Now on the next recording, I'm gonna take you to the flooded meadows, right beside the Baltic Sea at Sand Mar Reserve, and of several species in this recording, which was made with an S-M-E-E-A passive recording, this one, and it's quite wonderful. Gives you a good idea what goes on here. Early in the morning, you've got Northern Lap winging, first of all, overhead, just giving calls and quite close in the meadow, displaying common snipe overhead giving their flight display.

Also, a few calls from birds displaying on the ground. Common goal, very prevalent species at Santa Mar Reserve. Flying very close to the recorder times you can actually hear their wing beats at one point a distance. Stock dove calling once or twice in the woodlands. Close by herding goal, going overhead, calling displaying red shank.

Another species very common at the site on these meadows. Just giving calls on display and also some calls of Arctic Turn a wonderful recording once again, recorded passively with the SM mini recorder. Have a listen.

The next recording I have for you came on the 25th of May. I visit early in the morning and it was very, very windy on that particular morning. And at this time of the year, the first common Rose Finch are returning to sandbar reserve. Now, common Rose Finch is a specialty of this reserve. It's an excellent site for these species, often upwards of three to five males singing at the site.

It particularly likes to damp woodland in the area. But I found this bird in the coastal woodland, possibly newly arrived, as I say, very, very windy, and it was singing away in some tall trees quite close to the flooded meadows near the coastline. Now, in the background here, there were several nests of common starting.

The birds were busy feeding young. You will hear that also in this recording. There's a nice ambience, as I say, from the wind moving through the forest. So this is common Rose Finch in song at Sandara Reserve on the 25th of May.

So that was common Rose fi recorded with the Tinga Pbla. Now, the day before it was a bit calmer, still a little bit windy, but I got another recording of Common Rose Wing at Santa Mar Reserve this time in a more sheltered area with a different background. In the background, you will hear the song of Stock Dove is singing Chaffing and Eurasian re.

Also some calls here of Yellow Hammer, but the main subject here is Common Rose Finch. You can hear the bird a little bit better here. A very nice, clear recording of the song of this Wonderful Species. This is Common Rose Finch.

Now the next recording I have for you is quite brief. It's a fly by common snip calling in flight. Quite a nice recording. As I say, very close to the recording. You can hear the bird's wing beets clearly as it passes. Calling in the background here there is yellow hammer. Also some oyster to catcher calling in the distance as well as the calls of Northern lapping.

The main subject here is a very close fly by of common night.

Now the next recording I have for you is of common white throat. The bird is calling in the rain and it's just scolding giving some alarm call to some passing birders along a hike path at the site. Now I've found with passive recording with SMEs, it's lovely to get these rainy kind of sounds in the background.

Quite often I don't record actively in the rain, so it's very nice to get rain ambiance in the background. This is quite a nice recording despite the fact I've seen humans close by. And I quite like this one. This is common wide throat giving alarm calls with a few common goal flying around in the background.

Now one of the things I get with passive recording is some nice nocturnal flight calls. And that's very, very welcome. Always I lead these recorders running pretty much 24 hours a day. I don't see the point if you're gonna lead them out for a week and limiting them to just daylight hours or early morning periods, you may as well record around the clock.

And this recording is of cot overlying in the darkness. It's a very clear call. It's a very nice recording of the species. Knock me call. We'll have a listen now. This is KT overlying in the dead of night at Santa Ma Reserve in mid-May 2025.

Now the next recording. Once again, common cuckoo. We're going back to cuckoo again. This is a wonderful recording, and in the background you have singing Willow warbler, blue tit calls of green finch, singing wood pigeon, and some song and calls of chaffin, but unmistakably here. Cuckoo very, very close to the recorder.

Wonderful recording with the SM Mini right in the middle of the woodland on the 14th of May, 2025.

Now we're gonna move back to the flooded meadows by the Baltic Sea. For the next species, it is Eurasian Corloo. Now, Eurasian Corloo undoubtedly one of my favorite species with regard to vocalizations. It's such an iconic sound, and I was very happy to get these calls from a bird. The birds move through this area in May, and also late April.

So I've got a few nice recordings of the species over the course of the spring. I'm gonna play one of those now, quite a short recording in the background here. As always, common snipe and some black wing also in the distance, some yellow hammer in song and some common chaffing, but no mistaking the main subject here.

Eurasian Corloo very close to the SM mini recorder.

Now I will stay on these flooded meadows for now and a slightly longer recording this time. Well worth the time I think to listen to this one. This is a very common species in Europe. It is Eurasian Skylark, but its song is absolutely quite incredible. Again, this is a passive recording with the SM mini recorders.

And in the background you will hear Snipe lap wing, common red shank singing wood pigeon heading goal over a head and various geese in the distance. But it's a quite wonderful recording this of a singing Skylar over the medals. Have a listen folks.

Now a pasturian species next and species I worked with quite a lot in 2025. The species is garden warbler. They returned to Sweden from early May onwards, and they're wonderful, wonderful songster. Very common here in Sweden. But I wanted to make an effort to collect plenty of Song of the Species in 2025.

And as Sand Mar is an excellent site for the species, it was an area I did collect quite a bit of song by them. Now in the background here, you're gonna hear gray lag chaffing re in song, Eurasian Re in song, common goal, flying overhead, giving some calls, and wood pigeon also in the woodland in the background.

But the main species in the background that you can hear here is Willow warbler, another very common pass, Ryan Species at Sand Mar Reserve, indeed all over Sweden. But a wonderful recording here actively recorded on the 10th of May, 2025 with the Tinga Parabola. This is Garden Warbler in Song.

Now I'm gonna stay in Garden warbler for a while. I have a lot of audio of the species from Sand Marr and from many different individuals as well, and no two sing the same. The next recording is also Garden Order, as I say, very, very close to the Tinga Pbla. This one's recorded a little bit later in the month on the 24th of May at Sand Mar.

And listen in the background for the song also of Common Rose Finch in the distance. But about three minutes here, very close up of Gardener in Full Song. This bird was really going at it. How about listen.

Now Garden Marble course is very similar to black cap. They sound very, very similar in song and I still struggle with the species. So many times this year had a tinga on a bird that I couldn't see initially recording the bird thinking this is a black cap and out flies a garden warbler or vice versa.

And they are incredibly difficult at times here in Sweden. I'm going to play a recording now of a garden warbler in song, very harsh sounding and I was thinking to myself, which one is this? And when I flew out, it proved it was a garden warbler. It's just a lesson. Just be careful with these birds. Garden marler don't often sound that flutie and can indeed sound very, very harsh.

More similar to black cap. Have a bit of work to do on these is, like I say, collecting audio of both species. I'm finding it much more difficult to actually collect audio of Black cap here in Sweden. They are the scarcer of the two species, believe it or not, but I'll play this recording. This is garden mortar at Sand Ma Reserve on the 11th of May, 2025 again with the Tinga problem.

Now the next recording is an SME passive recording. It's quite remarkable. It's green woodpecker and also black woodpecker to a lesser degree, and various species alarming in the forest. I'm not sure what was going on here. I'm guessing either a Whitetailed eagle or a goshawk or another raptor of some species was sitting in a tree close to these birds.

But as you can hear in this recording, everything is going absolutely berserk. Makes for a very, very interesting recording. Notably for Green Woodpecker, which is alarming constantly through this recording. There's other species in the background too, like Jay spotted fly catcher and Blackbird. Notably, this is quite a fantastic recording of general alarm in the forest.

I assume because of the presence of an avian predator. Have a listen folks.

Now one of the joys of passive recording this year has been obtaining long soundscapes of some quite remarkable habitats. And the wetland meadows on the edge of the Bol Sea at Sand Marr are quite remarkable. Now, every morning, just before it gets bright, the whole place just explodes into life, and I collected some incredible soundscapes from the site with passive recorders using the SM Mini.

And the sound has been quite remarkable. That is to say the recording quality has been quite incredible on these devices, so I can't speak highly enough of them. Of course, at Slingo Pela or a very, very expensive microphone would be better. But to be honest, the ease of use of these devices is absolutely wonderful.

You just put them down, hide them in locations anywhere you want. You can program it on your mobile phone for whatever hours of the day you want to record. Like I say, I just record around the clock in this recording. You're gonna hear an absolutely incredible preda soundscape. From these wetland meadows, the main species being northern lap wing, common snipe, both in display, both on the ground and overhead.

Quite often you can hear their wing beats. You can also hear stock dove singing quite close by in the woodlands, the coastal Woodlands Skylark overhead giving song. There's also Arctic turn distant cuckoo in song meadow pivot in song displaying red shank and also singing yellow hammer. And this is what people mean when they say diverse habitat, diverse species.

Biodiversity. Sand mar is so incredibly well run. You're not allowed to walk any of these meadows. They're fenced off in the summer. The birds are undisturbed and they get the breed and things are as they should be. And I can't help thinking sometimes when I'm listening to recordings like this, this is what it should sound like.

Maybe on the Shannon Callows in Ireland or in other parts of the uk. If we just protect our habitats a little bit better, so in some cases this is what you're losing. Have a listen to this. It's an absolutely wonderful, wonderful scene.

So there you go folks. That's the Sandmeyer Files, the first installment, the first sound magazine I've put together from a lot of audio collected at the site in the spring of 2025. It's been an incredible experience over the course of the year, just collecting all of this audio, some of it passively, some of it actively, and I've really enjoyed my time in the field and it's been quite incredible.

Also, just to go through this audio on these devices that I've left out there, you know, for up to a week, 10 days at a time. And when you go back to the desktop, open up these files and hear what's going on in the dead of the night just before dawn, certain birds passing through. It's like little treasure trove of audio files and I absolutely love to hear what's going on.

It really unlocks the area in many, many ways now. This is quite a long sound magazine. I figure it's quite nice just to get settled in quite quickly into an episode. Let people relax, do some narration, and just evenly play out these audio files so that people can relax and listen to them. That's all for me here at Wild Bird Acoustics for this episode.

This is Alan Dalton signing out. Thanks for listening, folks, as always, and we'll see you next time here at Wild Bird Acoustics.

Now, there we go. That's the Sandmeyer files, the very first installment of an incredible amount of audio I picked up in the spring of 2025. There's a lot more to come from the site and a lot more remarkable audio from other species as well. So stay tuned for that. Going further into the podcast in season three.

I hope you have enjoyed it, as I say feedback gladly received at Wild Bird acoustics@gmail.com. Get in touch if you feel like it, folks, and as always, all that remains is for me to thank you to listeners for tuning into Wild Bird acoustics. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. We'll see you again folks in a couple of weeks.

Good birding, and take it easy.

 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.