Pentargon Cove sea and birds panorama, from south end of Beeny Cliff

A weird 'split personality' panorama, with quite different-sounding sea action on either side. To left, the small swell is breaking on the rocks to left of the big cave with colony of guillemots and razorbills. The periodic groups of relatively larger waves create a very modest commotion there each time, often making the guillemots / razorbills fairly difficult to hear, while the waves in deeper water round to the right, in and around the cave that the recorder is nearly on top of are not breaking in that sort of way, and we hear instead a beautiful deep muscular 'swoosh' as each wave meets the cliff face.

This would be an excellent sleep-assist recording for some, and healthier than most such soundscapes because the different sea actions on either side, and the guillemots' antics this time being just a subsidiary feature, help cultivate healthier brain function than simpler soundscapes where the brain isn't being challenged to interpret differently from the two sides. Note that I'm NOT presenting this recording as a worthwhile one specifically for the guillemots and razorbills. In this case I regard those as just a fun side-show on the (left) side. If you want to hear a really good dedicated recording of that cave's resident comedians, then please go to my previous upload, https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/691662/ .

I made this recording on 18 June 2023, part-way down the steep grassy slope on the south end of Beeny Cliff, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK, closely following my greatly successful recording session for the guillemots / razorbills on the 14th. Because of the slight swell this time (rather than the no-swell last time), there was no way I could repeat or advance upon that success, but this time I had a second recorder with me, and put one in a position aimed to capture both the guillemot / razorbill antics on the left and whatever was going on in the cave vestibule area rather hidden away immediately to right. There was potential to pick up deep rumbles and occasional booms from this very close-by cave itself. Indeed, during this recording, from my 'base' position just some 3 or 4 metres to right of the recorder, I often heard some deep rumbles and the occasional cave boom — yet none of that showed up in the recording.

Nearer at hand, the twittery little birds that are often flitting around in the foreground are mostly linnets. Just occasionally we hear the odd beautifully sweet song fragments from one of those. Also around us, we periodically hear meadow pipit and rock pipit, while on the odd occasion a distant skylark may be made out. Other birds often to occasionally heard include herring gull, oystercatcher, and wren. If you hear a pheasant, that is on the hillside or top beyond the cove.

Advisory

This really comes to life, and reveals masses of further detail, when listened to with high-grade headphones rather than speakers.

Facing south over mouth of Pentargon Cove during this recording. The recorder is just off to left, as indicated by arrow. The recording's panorama extends from just off to the left, right round into the cave vestibule area immediately underneath the camera position here and immediately to hard-right and behind.

Overlooking mouth of Pentargon Cove northwards to Beeny Cliff. Arrow indicates the recording position. Note the tiny lighter fleck on cliff edge just left of arrowhead. That's the large boulder crusted with orange lichen you can see in foreground of upper photo.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-D100 (mics set to their normal 120° angle), with two nested Windcut furry windshields. It was placed on a Sirui carbon fibre tripod used at close to minimum height to minimize wind disturbance.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield and to correct for the D100's weakness of lower bass rendering. Surprisingly, despite that lower bass boost, mic wind noise didn't show up significantly at all in this recording, despite there actually being a gentle breeze around there, which would have needed reduction during processing. It appears that I'd fortuitously found an aerodynamic 'sweet spot' for placement of this recorder.

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