Birds' dawn chorus north-west of Bellever Tor, Dartmoor

Full dawn chorus (pre-dawn to early morning) in edge of regrowing forestry in clear-felled area, among scattered Sitka spruce trees (Bellever Forest). Cuckoos periodically echoing / reverberating in the dense stands of the spruces not far off, and we're treated to a half-hour quiet nightjar chorus plus a lone melancholy-sounding distant cuckoo leading us in ever so gradually…

Caution! The opening is very quiet. If you turn up the volume to anything more than a level that would give a good rendition of normal symphonic orchestral music, some of the later birdsong will be uncomfortably loud.

This is one of four widely separated concurrent recordings that I made during the pre-dawn to early morning period on 1 June 2019, sheltered from an initially moderate but decreasing south-westerly breeze by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees outside the forestry perimeter on the north-west flank of Bellever Tor, near Postbridge, on Dartmoor, Devon, UK.

As I explain in detail on my page The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session alone in the wilds, this session was the all-night 'final performance' — the culmination of my series of test and then 'rehearsal' recordings, which was underscored by detailed prospecting for optimal recorder placements, which were aimed towards my doing a greatly improved version of the previous year's somewhat blighted all-night session here, again for birds' full evening and dawn choruses, including nightjar choruses and plenty of cuckoo sound.

Whereas in the 'dress rehearsal' for this session (evening / dusk, 14 May) all four recorders had been placed around the west / north-west flank of Bellever Tor, this time I wanted to increase their scope, so only two recorders were placed there, the other two being placed further north, more away from the tor, both just inside the edge of regrowing forestry.

Ideally they'd have been just outside, in the clearing that runs very roughly northwards from Bellever Tor (particularly to capture nightjars, and, hopefully, skylarks), but there were no self-seeded Sitka spruce trees there to shelter the recorders, so I placed them as close to the main clearing as possible while keeping them sufficiently sheltered.

This recording is from my recorder labelled R4, at the most northerly position, just a little north of where the drystone wall that crosses the main clearing crosses the forestry perimeter, and, as I say, it was sheltered just within the regrowing forestry. I left it and the others running all night, to ensure that nothing important would be missed. Nightjars and cuckoos don't have much of an 'off' period in the short nights of this time of year, and there might always be something unexpected of interest in the middle of the night.

In the event, although the nightjars gave only a late and sparse performance for the recorders in the evening part of the session, they did much better for the pre-dawn into dawn period. This recording gets a pretty good showing of that, especially considering the constraints imposed by having to have the recorder sheltered from the breeze. This is a beautifully atmospheric effect, especially with the punctuations from occasional cuckoo episodes.

Those cuckoos echo / reverberate really nicely, but that effect is not from the dense stand of spruces west of Bellever Tor, but from the same on and in vicinity of Lakehead Hill, a little NNW of this spot.

Telephoto view from other side of main clearing, of partially felled forestry on Lakehead Hill, NNW from Bellever Tor, taken during the evening part of the session. Cuckoo echoes / reverberation would have been coming from the dense stands around there.

Looking roughly NNW from Bellever Tor, pointing out recorder placements for this all-night session, towards the end of the session early in the morning. R4 (for this recording) is the furthest, with R5 and R6 off to left.

A fuller, more contextual, description of this session (as the culmination of a sequence of prospecting and rehearsal sessions, to greatly improve on the previous year's blighted all-night session here), is to be found at my page The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session out in the wilds.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, unusually with just one furry windshield (Windcut, custom), and it was placed on a Hama normal-size lightweight tripod.

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, and applying dynamic EQ using the VST plugin TDR Nova GE with a custom preset to greatly minimize the odd bits of wind disturbance that did occur.

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