At 3.04am I set off on the motorbike to one of my favourite places in Ballinvally woods.  (Near Arklow, County Wicklow, Ireland) When I arrived I could see something had changed, the distant trees seemed different somehow.  Had the well grown piece of forest that I record in and even camped in last year been harvested ?  It had.  I knew it was time and was even surprised it had not been harvested last year as the trees were of a good size, some were even huge.  It would have been nice if they had left the work for another week or more, I could then had made the final recordings there before they cut them all down.  
Half way down there on the left is a scrubby open area, so I set up the Tascam and a pair of Rode NT2A microphones under a few small native trees, these are near a stream in-between two lots of plantation pine forest.  I set the gain at 46db and left it there to record while I went down the road to take a look at the devastation and try find somewhere to record and quickly as the dawn chorus had almost begun.   There was a mountain of timber to my right.  Just past this is another piece of forest, not as tall as the old part but likely to have birds singing there, so I went in and set up the Sennheiser MKH8020 microphones and the Sound Devices MixPre3 recorder.  There was one plus about the situation and that is that the birds that used to be in the cut forest had no choice but to pile-in to the forest I was now in and this appeared to be the case as the birdsong seemed to be more dense.  In one of the recordings it sounds like I was moving about, but rather it was a Sika deer, I wouldn’t have moved but what if it tripped over the cables and pulled down the expensive 8020’s ?  So I quietly showed myself, the deer saw me and moved away.  I started and stopped the recorder quite a few times as various jets flew over.    It was a cool morning, partly cloudy, dry and calm.  Later having processed the recordings I saw that the Tascam and NT2A’s picked up practically nothing else but a Wren singing,  that means that the bird sang intermittently for about three hours as the two files add up to three hours ten minutes.   The levels were perfect, minus three db generally, only two songs in three hours went slightly above zero decibels.  I kept about 36 minutes worth.  The MixPre files are amazing, even though the species to be heard are very limited, the overall recordings are good and I am really pleased with them.  A Songthrush kept the action going and in the distance I heard sheep at a higher level than I have heard them before in that part of the woods, some Crows added a nice texture to the chorus.  Recording 3664.     I took the pictures with my smart phone, the Samsung Galaxy J5 Duos.

Dawn Chorus (4) 19 June 21 at 5.06am in Ballinvally Woods

It's half past seven in the evening. The color of the sun is turning golden but it is still hot. It is 26 degrees outside. There are no boat owners or passengers in the harbor. There is one small building in the port where a ticket seller sits despite the fact that the last ferry of the day to Piirissaare departed half an hour ago. The water of the lake sings against the ferry's landing bridge. There are swallows nesting right under the bridge and motor boats can be heard from the lake

The sound of Lake Peipsi in Laaksaare boat harbor. Field recording. Estonia June 30, 2021

Recorded at Grundskatan, Bjuröklubb, morning the 16 May 2018. A wet area with much leafy trees (alskog) near the shore of the Bothnian bay, Bottenviken. The two Woodpeckers were foraging at the trees.
Gear: two Sennheiser MKH20 in stereo on a Jecklin disc. Recording was running for about 30 min.

Frogs and White-backed Woodpecker

Haunting Red Deer rutting in the forest of Orléans

the pond and the trees beyond with quiet inside

Late morning in Palupõhja village Alam-Pedja nature reserve, Estonia. Different little birds are chirping in the trees next to the village road when suddenly a black woodpecker comes and bangs his drum four and a half times. The recording was made in the late morning of April 17, 2023

Equipment used: Zoom F3 digital recorder An Azden microphone pre-amplifier/mixer Primo Microphones with EM172 capsules. Recorded 32 bit 48kHz

Black woodpecker drumming

30 May 2023

To get good recordings of birds you have to come close. On way of achieving this is to work with concealed microphones. It’s not easy to predict where the target bird/s will be, and I regularly fail in my attempts, but occasionally I succeed. I scouted a semi-open sandy area – a former tree seed orchard –  where I had encountered lekking Black Grouse last year, and hid a small stereo lavalier microphone overnight in the crown of an isolated small pine tree. One by one the Black Grouse males arrived in the late evening hours and immediately began displaying around the small pine tree.  

Umeå commune, Västerbotten County (63.39 N, 19.54 E)

Primo-EM172s

01_01.05

In the middle of the Black Grouse lekk

Zoom F6 + Sennheiser 8020 mono in Telinga parabolic + Sennheiser 8020 pair in Olsen wing for stereo ambience (-18 dB).

Blackbird Midsummer 230624

Hike at Mt-Climont stream

The echoes of Eurasian Cranes are bouncing from forest edges in countryside landscape of Rõuge parish, Estonia. It is a distant corner of southern Estonia with only a few farmhouses in sight.
The song of skylarks is filling early morning spring air, goldfinches and a northern wheatear are vocalising nearby, looking for a suitable nesting site next to a small country house and several old oak trees. Other birds in the recording: wood pigeons, eurasian cuckoo, willow warbler, crow.

Spring morning soundscape in southern Estonia countryside

Spring Undergrowth

A cabinetmaker by trade.  I have been recording birds for over 40 years.  Even as a seven year old I loved to hear the sound of birds. 
I believe that birdsong is a perfect reflection of the natural environment and yet a part of the experience of the environment.  
Over the years I have made some wildlife films and videos.  For wildlife recording I have been around Ireland, Wales, Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Belize, Guyana, Brazil, Peru and Costa Rica. At the moment I have 26 albums of birdsong/nature, most of which can be found here for free download in high quality F.L.A.C. format.
  
Birdsong is Spiritual Medicine,
a Natural Treasure 
and a Companion to Silence.

Dawn Chorus (4) 19 June 21 at 5.06am in Ballinvally Woods

Fintan O'Brien

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