amazing capture! How did your mics not peak during this recording? They sound so close

Nightmares of tawny owls

As We Fell From Our Radiant Palaces

Red Deer Rut - Binaural 26:09:2022

Field recording based composition by Alëna Korolëva, with voice of Eki Shola.

Recorded in marble quarries near Borba, Portugal, October 2022.

Strange but true fact: mining is responsible for nearly half of the world’s economy. The history of mining around the world can be read in the open scars that have been left when the sought after resource has been extracted. In these wounds, often larger-than-life pits abandoned by humans, new forms of life have gathered. Inverted Mountains is a documentary record of one of these spaces. 

Portugal’s Borba Region is rich in marble, 400 pit mines dot the landscape, all but 50 are abandoned. In 2018 a wall of one of the biggest quarries collapsed and buried five people in a landslide.

This track offers a detailed examination of sunset at the bottom of the pit, four years after the accident. Pigeons circle in the lower levels, offering a sound of wings, while starlings and swallows gather near the mouth of the pit, 50 meters above. The natural echoing acoustics of the steep walls allow each bird cry to resonate in a living delay, as if there were thousands not hundreds of birds gathering here. At the very end, the lonely bird song is echoed by a human voice, calling out in a plaintive wordless cry, the ghost of all those whose lives were lost in this forsaken place.

Inverted Mountains

Early morning. I went to see if it would be possible to record moor frogs in a place where I know they are. I didn't see any frogs, but I did meet a capercaillie. I tied the microphones to a tree and left to record. The picture shows the same bird that appears in the recording.

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

Western capercaillie makes vocalizations in early spring forest

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

A male European nightjar delivers his strange motor like song from one of his favorite song post before moving to the next one, ending his trill by a joyful wing clap.

Lyon countryside, late spring.
2023-06-10, 22h

Lom Usi Pro, Sony PCM M10

Recorded by Grégoire Chauvot & Mélia Roger

Illustration : John Gerrard Keulemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

European nightjar, Song and wing clap - Mélia Roger & Grégoire Chauvot

During the first week of September 2023 I returned to Palupohja in the Alam Pedja reserve in Estonia for a short break before the autumn really begins and the days become short and cold.  Early in 2020 I was booked to go but then Covid struck and I had to cancel the trip.  It was good to meet up again with fellow wildlife sound recordists Andrus Kannel and Veljo Runnel and also Robert who runs the place.  I was booked-in for only a few days so I didn't want to be weighed-down with equipment so I brought only the Sound Devices - MixPre3 and the Tascam X8 recorders and a pair of Lewitt 440 and a pair of Primo EM272 microphones. 

A few years ago I was there in August from about the 8th to the 14th, I recorded mainly cricket choruses in the evenings and early nights, I recorded also in the early mornings but didn't get many recordings, at least not enough similar recordings to make any new production.  Very diverse recordings are hard to put together in a way that would sound like they were all made at the same time of day.  This trip however, though I only got about six hours of recordings, they are very alike and when I got home I was pleasantly surprised what I was able to make of them, the quiet background in each made it easy to cross-fade from one recording to the next.  I would like to thank Andrus for the lift out to the reserve from Tartu and his help with the name for this production.  Hilissuvi is an Estonian word that basically means the time of year that is the late summer and also the early autumn.  There is no English word for it. 

For the moment I will leave it as a free download but when I  put it on my Bandcamp page I will have to uncheck the free download box.

Hilissuvi (1) New Album

Voici un des sons surprenants que j’ai pu enregistrer au cours du voyage en Patagonie en novembre 2023 avec Fernand Deroussen. 
Attention à utiliser un dispositif d'écoute permettant de bien restituer les sons graves !

En arrivant dans la vallée de Chingue, au sud-est de El Calafate, nous avions l’impression qu’il y avait des travaux dans un chalet, comme des coups de marteau. 
Alors que je cherchais à enregistrer un oiseau, j’ai pu entendre distinctement un son sourd, répétitif à quelques mètres de moi et ce son provenait du sol ! Il y avait des trous dans le sol, caractéristiques d’un micromammifère. En croisant plusieurs sources d’informations, j’ai alors pu déterminer qu’il s’agissait du Tuco tuco de Magellan (Ctenomys magellanicus). 

Déjà, Charles Robert Darwin dans son récit du voyage du Beagle entre 1826 et 1836 écrivait à propos de cette espèce : « Au R. Negro, dans le nord de la Patagonie, il y a un animal qui a les mêmes habitudes et probablement des espèces très proches, mais que je n'ai jamais vu. Son bruit est différent de celui de l'espèce Maldonado [Ctenomys brasiliensis] ; il n'est répété que deux fois au lieu de trois ou quatre, et il est plus distinct et plus sonore : lorsqu'on l'entend de loin, il ressemble tellement au bruit que l'on fait en coupant un petit arbre avec une hache, que j'ai parfois eu des doutes à son sujet » (Jaksic 2023).

Le capitaine du Beagle, Robert Fitz-Roy, rapporte que "ce nom indien [tucu-tucu], prononcé de manière gutturale, exprime le curieux son produit par ces créatures lorsqu'elles sont sous terre,  un bruit qui ressemble un peu au coup d'un marteau éloigné » (Jaksic 2023).  Le son peut être entendu à au moins 10-15 mètres du terrier (Francescoli 1999).
Les Ctenomys sont des rongeurs vivant dans le sol. Soixante-neuf espèces ont été décrites, toutes présentent en Amérique du Sud (Zache et al. 2021). 
Malheureusement, le répertoire acoustique de ces espèces a été peu étudié. La plupart des données ont été obtenues en laboratoire et les rares études sur des espèces dans leur milieu naturel ne portent que sur les sons audibles en dehors des galeries souterraines. Les vocalisations des Ctenomys n’ont été étudiées que chez trois espèces. Ces espèces peuvent aussi produire des sons non vocaux produits par des vibrations de leur corps ou des claquements de dents (Zache et al. 2021). 
Dans cet enregistrement, il s’agit d’une émission vocale, de type séquentiel. L’animal ouvre la bouche, lève la tête et contracte son corps pour produire les sons (Francescoli 1999). Dans une étude sur deux autres espèces de Ctenomys, Zaché et son équipe ont pu mettre en évidence 5 types de vocalisation différents (Zache et al. 2021). 
Il est probable qu'il s'agisse ici d'un cri d'alarme en présence d'intrus. Mais sachant que les vocalisations de cette espèce n’ont pas fait l’objet d’études à ce jour, il est difficile d’en connaître réellement la signification (Jaksic, comm. pers 2023).

Cette espèce n'est pas menacée (LC (Llobet et al. 2023)). 

Bibliographie :
FRANCESCOLI, Gabriel, 1999. A preliminary report on the acoustic communication in Uruguayan Ctenomys (Rodentia, Octodontidae): basic sounds types. Bioacoustics-the International Journal of Animal Sound and Its Recording - BIOACOUSTICS. 1 janvier 1999. Vol. 10, pp. 203‑218. 
JAKSIC, Fabian, 2023. Historical and current knowledge of the Magellanic tuco-tuco Ctenomys magellanicus in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, South America. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural. 11 septembre 2023. Vol. 96. 
LLOBET, Toni, VELIKOV, Ilian, SOGORB, Lluís, PEACOCK, Faansie, JUTGLAR, Francesc, MASCARELL, Àlex et MARTÍ & JES, Blanca, 2023. All the Mammals of the World. Barcelona : Lynx Edicions. ISBN 978-84-16728-66-4. 
ZACHE, Keila, SILVEIRA, Lucas, FRANCESCOLI, Gabriel et FREITAS, Thales, 2021. Description of the sound diversity of two species of tuco-tucos ( Ctenomys torquatus and Ctenomys lami ) in natural environment. 
Photo cc by Sebastián Saiter V

Ctenomys magellanicus - Tuco Tuco De Magellan

For details : www.loiseauson.com/en/beaver01/
Pour détails : www.loiseauson.com/castor01/

Beaver & Common Loons - Castor & Plongeons huards

15 Sep 2020

I decided to put up a couple of "droprigs" overnight along a small stream near my home in an attempt to record calls from Common Kingsfisher, a rare vagrant here in the north where I live. Listening to the sound files back home I hear lots of fish jumping, and suddenly the chittering sound from Eurasian Otters (Lutra lutra) passing close by the microphones during fishing. One can hear the calls and the breathing after diving. Good to learn that otters thrive in this beatiful stream.

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

Primo-EM172s

Fishing Eurasian Otters

Lars Edenius

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