Full birds' Dawn Chorus, from high on Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge

This recording is backed and surrounded by a whole mass of related and often inspirational story. To put myself back there on that night for writing these notes, I'm in touch again with the power and 'electricity' of that night's experience, with shivers up the spine and near-tearfulness that this was all really happening, and not just a dream sent to torment me with the waking-up. — But this is the spot for the basic info, and a fuller, more contextual, account (connecting with a big and convoluted personal story), is to be found at my page The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session out in the wilds.

I made this recording as part of an all-night recording session on 18-19 June 2014. The exact location was just slightly east of Hunting Gate, the highest point on the Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

To convey as much as possible of the full dawn chorus experience, I've included a quite long 'lead-in' period, where you hear just the distant rushing of the River Teign down below in the valley, now and again a very faint tweet or twitter from some little birdie just wondering whether it's time to get up yet. — And then, ever so quietly, a distant nightjar starts churring on and off, before finally a song thrush down in the valley puts its head above the parapets, so to speak, and gives the cue for the other songbirds (initially mostly song-thrush and some robins) to start phasing in with their serenades, then with the odd yellowhammers and of course blackbirds piling in.

Occasionally a male pheasant fairly nearby makes a rather startling transient disturbance, particularly once things have got going properly, though it did that once or twice before I started this recording.

By some half-hour in, a mind-boggling number of blackbirds are singing — mostly distant — always punctuated by other species of course. How could any well-functioning human not absolutely love and exalt in such multitudinous, celebratory-sounding, blackbird choruses?!

Note that this is basically a distant and thus nearly all quiet panorama, facing across the deep, steep-sided valley, in a heathland clearing between patches of valley-slope copse and woodland. The other side of the valley is more consistently wooded — in fact largely forestry plantation, containing mostly conifer but some patches of broadleaved trees.

Advisory
Because of this being a primarily distant and thus quiet panorama, it's NOT a good idea to turn the volume up beyond a sensible normal setting. If you do so, you would certainly hear still more detail, but that would not be as I was hearing it, and also you'd find the occasional really close bird song very uncomfortably loud.

The more western (upstream) part of the recording's panorama. The little patch of valley fog is in the Chagford area, and high Dartmoor forms the distant skyline.

The techie stuff:
I took with me two Sony PCM-M10 recorders, so I could record two concurrent dawn choruses, some distance apart (in the event, nearly a kilometre apart). Actually I started this recording about 2.30 a.m. BST, but what's on this final, edited version starts at about 3.50, with the distant 'kick-off' twitterings of a song thrush down in the bottom of the valley insinuating themselves into one's awareness from about 8 minutes in. The recorders were each fitted with a Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (the original, more effective, light grey version).

I placed the one for this recording perched rather precariously as you can see in the photo, by means of a GorillaPod, just east of a line of copse running down the valley slope from Hunting Gate. I'd been thinking of placing it within the copse, but realized that the foliage close around would blur fine / distant detail in the soundscape, so chose to put it in the clearing just to the east, but still near enough to to the copse to benefit from some foreground birds singing from the trees there. — The irony of course was that for some arcane reason, in the event hardly any birds sang from there, so the recorded soundscape was mostly a distant one.

The recorder just waiting for me to take it down, having done a brilliant job!

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, but much more recently I used the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin to widen and dramatically sharpen-up the appalling stereo imaging of the PCM-M10. That distinctly over-brightened each recording it was let loose on, and I rectified that by applying an EQ tilt as follows: a straight line from 100Hz (no change) to 8K (-7dB). That then required a little compensatory level amplification (usually +3dB, but varied according to each recording).

… And a reminder, that there's fuller, more contextual account of that recording session at The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session out in the wilds!

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