Evening birdsong by River Teign near Teign Gorge — Jackdaws, Rooks & grazing cattle

This recording and its sibling were a bonus extra, thanks to my early arrival for my first-ever all-night recording session at the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, at just past 6.0 p.m. BST on 18 June 2014. That meant I had the whole evening to 'kill', as well as all the time till dawn chorus time, as I was going to be 'up' all night to make the most of the occasion.

As I was wandering along the track by the River Teign from Dogmarsh Bridge on the Whiddon Down to Moretonhampstead road, towards the Teign Gorge (not a gorge, actually, but a deep steep-sided valley), wondering how the hell I'd not be driven crazy with all the waiting, when I came to the last field before coming to the Teign Gorge woods, I was struck by the profusion of birdsong right there, and set up a recording to capture the blackbirds, jackdaws, blackcaps and other species in all their apparent joyful rapture. — Well, of course that rapture was really mine rather than the birds'!

Once I'd got that recording running, I wandered on towards the other end of that field, where I was struck by the profusion of jackdaw and rook calls, so I set up the other recorder. I positioned the recorder for both of those to minimize the River Teign sound, while not blocking it off altogether, and having it more or less behind each recorder, so that it was clearly just a gentle background and the birds were the really important thing. In that second recording, towards the end a herd of grazing cattle came closer and closer to the recorder and added a lovely unexpected element. No moos but just munching and sometimes heavy, steamy-sounding breathing!

The first recording was made from a fence post just beyond the power-line pole, while this recording was made quite close to the start of the Teign Gorge woods beyond, facing obliquely towards and to left of this view, with a small hillside copse pretty-well straight ahead.
This photo taken during my weary but jubilant walk-out early the following morning. We're looking back downstream to the wooded hills that form the so-called Teign Gorge.
Thank you, nice moos, for your wonderful performance for this recording!

This, then, is the second of those two recordings, joyfully replete with jackdaws and rooks, plus, late in the recording, a herd of earnestly munching cattle, intently not mooing; we get some steamy-sounding heavy breathing instead. A fuller, more contextual, description of that overall session (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.

Techie stuff:

For both these recordings the recorder was perched by means of a GorillaPod on top of a fence post beside the track, facing into the hillside field, with its contained copse and surrounding copses, so with the river roughly behind the recorder. I made the first recording from a little beyond the near end of the field, and this recording near the far end, and thus close to the beginning of the Teign Gorge woods.

The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with a Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective version with light grey fur).

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. For that widening I used a width setting of 160°. Because that somewhat over-brightens each recording it's let loose on, I rectified that by applying an EQ tilt as follows: a straight line from 100Hz (no change) to 8K (-3dB). That then required a little compensatory level amplification (+2dB in this case, though varies according to the recording), and that was it.

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