Hilarious guillemot / razorbill bedlams in cave — zoomed-in!

Surely one of my flagship recordings! Crazy bedlams in cave on south side of mouth of Pentargon Cove, with the best conditions I've yet had to hear them. When one guillemot starts up with its 'bogeyman howl' and stilted 'Punch and Judy laugher', others join in, presumably competing, sounding like a slapstick parody of a stereotypical den of witches or 'evil spirits'. Through my using a simple arrangement to produce a faithful zoomed-in effect, one can now hear these dear little comedians as I've never been able to achieve before!

I made this recording on 14 June 2023, part-way down the steep grassy slope on the south end of Beeny Cliff, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK. On this day, most unusually no swell at all was visible on the sea here — there being only minor superficial waves, making for exceptionally quiet sea conditions, even though still by no means silent. This, together with light wind, gave me an unprecedented opportunity for my experiment in using the recorder's narrow angle (90°) and widening that afterwards to get a real zoom effect, as though one were pretty close to that cave entrance.

As well as the colony in / around the cave, occasionally we hear a guillemot or razorbill further along the line of cliffs and even closer at hand round to the right — presumably in the cliff alcove, with cave, hidden away immediately round to hard right and behind. Just once we get a beautiful reverberating couple of calls from a curlew flying by. On the sea surface, periodically we can hear one or more guillemots skimming the surface — flying so low that their wings are hitting the sea surface. That is a very rapidly repeating smacking sound, for the guillemot's wings are small and so have to be very fast-moving for flight to be possible.

Nearer at hand, the twittery little birds that seem to be almost constantly flitting around in the foreground are mostly linnets. Just occasionally we hear the odd beautifully sweet song fragments from one of those, though nearly all the time it's just their contact calls. 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.

Once in a while we get a temporary hum from a passing fishing boat. I wasn't going to cut out all of that except where getting really intrusive, for that was part of the 'atmosphere' here.

Advisory

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

This recording in progress, with final remnants of sea mist gradually dissolving. The main guillemot / razorbill colony is in / around the last cave on left, which is big, with two entrances separated by the column that's only just visible in this view. What isn't clear is that the recorder is actually on a little rocky prominence, so the grass and cliff-edge beyond it are further away than is apparent here. The recorder is facing just slightly right of the cave.

Some of the guillemots high up on the column separating the two cave entrances (photo taken 12 June 2021)

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-D100 (mics unusually set to their 90° narrow angle), with two nested Windcut furry windshields. It was placed on an Aoka carbon fibre mini tripod.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and use of A1 Stereo Control VST plugin to widen the soundstage to 120° (the recorder's normal wide-angle coverage), so to produce a zoomed-in result, with level also raised a little to complete the zoomed-in effect. I established that widening any further tears apart the solidity of the stereo soundstage, so is not for doing. In A1Stereo Control I thus settled on 135% widening, and I'm quite bowled over by the authentic quality of the sound. Also, most conveniently, the latter software's widening process emphasizes treble frequencies, so I didn't have to do that manually. That boost is required for a proper zoomed-in effect.

There was some wind disturbance, but it was little enough that I was able to use the TDR Nova GE VST plugin to render all mic wind noise virtually inaudible.

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