Morning birdsong by River Teign near Teign Gorge

A celebration of spring birdsong from surrounding woods and copses close to the River Teign just upstream from the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, with lots of foreground blackcap and periodic more distant mistle thrush (sounds more like an anxious blackbird than a song thrush!).

On 11 April 2018 I placed the recorder in virtually the same position as on my 13 March recording here, and pointing the same way, so it had a slightly elevated position for obliquely overlooking the River Teign and getting a very spacious panorama ringed by woodland and copses. This time many more birds were singing, spring now being in full fling, and the mistle thrushes were performing more than in any previous recording of mine — though most of that performance was distant, so for the most part they didn't come across as star performers.

There were the odd occasions when one would strike up singing high up in the small copse at the bottom edge of which the recorder was placed, but because the recorder was pointing more or less away from it, in the recording it came out each time sounding a bit remote and beautifully reverberant, in a way that I didn't hear from the path by the Teign.

The Teign was louder than last time, the river being particularly full after a lot of rain.

Birds in the recording include Mistle Thrush, Blackbird (distant only), Blackcap (a lot), Great Tit, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Robin, Carrion Crow, Jackdaw, Chiffchaff, Woodpigeon (distant), (probably) Great Spotted Woodpecker (distant drumming), Green Woodpecker, and a puzzling song from a bird that I didn't see, sounding like a warbler (with some resemblance to reed or sedge warbler), which I suspect just might be one of the more intimate improvisations of a song thrush.

A recording from the same spot on 13 March the same year, with the recorder pointing the same way. The River Teign is coming from off to the right and behind, hidden from view where it's notionally in sight, as it's a little sunken between its banks. The so-called Teign Gorge starts in the woods straight ahead. Just imagine this scene with just a little less brown and more green, and you're here with this recording.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was used on a mini-size Zipshot tripod.

Initial post-recording processing was to use Audacity to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, with 9dB bass cut to tame the mic wind noise. I didn't know about dynamic EQ software then, such as TDR Nova, which latter I was put onto and got using later that year. That would have got me distinctly better results — selectively EQ-ing the significant bass peaks rather than emasculating the whole recording.

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