Recording birds waking up during dawn chorus day 2021, from 5:50 to 7am, UTC+1, while participating to the international broadcast of Reveil, created by Soundtent. Reveil is a 24+ hour broadcast following sunrise around the earth on dawn chorus day. 

The recording was made in the exact same location as last year, during the first lockdown. Since then, we can hear way more planes and traffic, even on a sunday early morning. 

What do you think about the birdlife?

ORTF Oktava direct into Focusrite Scarlett, 
recorded in BUTT, with field recordist Grégoire Chauvot.

Dawn Chorus - Reveil 2021

It’s May Day, at 4.51am, the nightingales are singing, and I’m about to start livestreaming the dawn chorus from Knepp Estate for Reveil8, a collective sound work, as it starts tracking the live sounds of sunrise across the world for the next 25 hours, finishing at 6am on the 2 May, International Dawn Chorus Day. 

Around 4am I started walking out in the moonlight, accompanied by the distant sound of Nightingales. By 5am the dawn chorus was in its full glorious flow and I was being treated to a cosy serenade by a Nightingale perched in the sallow eager to impress any females flying overhead.

As Artist-In-Residence here I'm recording soundscapes from the scrubland to capture the Knepp rewilding success story, of increasing biodiversity, including bird diversity as you can hear in this recording. As the former arable fields become thorny scrub, a habitat now almost totally erased from the wider countryside, it provides nesting habitat for a remarkable number of Nightingales. Also listen out for the Cuckoo, White Storks clattering their beaks, Song Thrush, Wren, Blackbirds, Blackcaps, Pheasant, Crows, Blue Tits, and a late entry by the Tawny Owl.

New tracks tagged #Reveil2021