Fun time: Acorn hail! — Falling acorns in Teign Gorge woods

Can an autumn day be experienced as vibrant and cheering rather than mellow, wistful or indeed melancholic? — Clearly 10 October 2018 here thought so! This autumn soundscape was captured on a sunny very warm, quite summery October day, on steep west slope of Hunter's Tor, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. Because the wind was an upper force-4 Bft south-easterly, the slope in the woods here was relatively though not fully sheltered, the wind gusts tending to catch the treetops more, causing newly-ripe acorns to dislodge from their cups and indeed sometimes to give little flurries of 'acorn hail'.

This was fascinating to listen to, for the sound of each impact varied according to what each acorn hit. And because this was on a fairly steep slope, many of the acorns would bounce a little way down the slope before coming to rest. They couldn't actually roll down significantly, because of the already accumulating dead-leaf litter and underlying soft and lumpy grass and moss cover.

However, I felt then, and still feel, a certain disappointment at this truly lovely and invigorating recording — a disappointment that would presumably apply only to me. The point is, what I narrowly missed because of a little bit of tunnel vision of mine that morning.

On that day I'd set out with no idea that I was going to have anything 'special' to record, and was primarily aiming for a short but reasonably strenuous hike, to help maintain my now rather diminished leg strength (apparently part of a post-viral syndrome I'd got landed with). But then, when I took the unofficial steep and direct ascent route in the woods for Hunter's Tor to get onto the Hunter's Path, I was amazed at the continual major flurries of 'acorn hail' on that slope as the wind kept catching the treetops there. That was breathtakingly thrilling, and I wanted to record there and then, but I was concerned first to get my little hike in, and then I could record there on my return.

That sense of urgency was because of thundery showers and strong wind forecast to come in by the end of the afternoon.

What I hadn't bargained for was that (a) in the early morning there would inevitably be a large number of acorns that had loosened-up enough overnight to get shaken out by the wind, as the latter would have been pretty light during the night, and (b) early morning is the time to record there anyway because of few people around then, whereas it can get very busy with walkers and family groups later on, and not to mention aeroplanes.

So, to my dismay, upon my return to have a late lunch stop there to combine with recording session, I found that only the occasional wind gusts were dislodging acorns, and there were only a few flurries of falling acorns that even approached the abundant bursts of 'acorn hail' that were happening two-a-penny in the early morning, so I made it all of a 3-hour session to give me some chance of getting at least some little scraps of useful recording.

— And of course I had to cut out a huge amount of the recording anyway, for the first half-hour was destroyed by aeroplanes and a persistently returning helicopter, and then, with less from that quarter, there were the odd yacking people and barking dogs episodes to be cut out — and the final full half-hour was trashed by a little group of people who were lingering on top of Hunter's Tor and got yacking with successive others who arrived there.

I doubted whether I'd manage to salvage anything really useful from that real mess of disturbances and the relative lack of acorns falling, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to end up with 128' of edited recording — though the falling-acorn episodes were rather thinly spread through that duration, and nothing like the morning's five-star performance.

So, I made a CD-length version by cutting sections out of some of the more 'fallow' sections, so enabling all the more interesting parts to be included. This did much improve the effect, though I'm still painfully aware of the thrilling abundance of what I'd crazily made myself miss in the morning.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of bird sound, too. Okay, it wasn't a bird chorus, but birds were not long out of earshot. Robins were just about the only singers, often singing enthusiastically as though it were spring, but other birds frequently sounded out with their particular calls. Birds heard include Robin, Raven, Jackdaw, Rook, Carrion Crow, Long-tailed Tit, and Blue Tit.

Advisory
Because of the occasional close acorn impacts, for a reasonably lifelike experience the playing volume needs to be 9dB above a sensible normal level. By far the best option here is to listen with high-grade headphones, and enjoy being pelted with those acorns that do come your way!

Photo taken on 16 October 2018, just a little above where this recording was made.

Photo taken on 19 October 2018, of the steep wooded slope where I made this recording.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was Sony PCM-D100, with three nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was used on a full-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 up to 9dB low bass cut to tame the mic wind noise.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!