Remote solitude with skylarks, by Black Ridge Brook on Dartmoor

A peaceful and eerily intense sense of remote solitude here (you can surely almost cut it with a knife!), with the continuous muffled burbling of Black Ridge Brook (next to the hill known as Little Kneeset), heard from near the ground, sheltered from a stiff breeze by a boulder, with the wind gusts blowing all around in the moorland grass and heather. Contrasting with all that stern austerity is the sweetness of the skylarks and occasional distant meadow pipit.

Getting recordings of skylarks on remotest Dartmoor was one of my initial aims that directed me into getting my first recorder. Fortunately I didn't have long to wait, because there was a long dry spell in early spring 2013, which invited me to get out to the remotest parts once more, this time armed with my then two recorders.

What I'd really wanted to capture was a dawn chorus of skylarks on remote Dartmoor, but that never worked out, but I still captured some wonderfully evocative soundscapes there at more 'civilized' time of day. This was my first capture of skylark song. I hadn't planned having a stream in the foreground, but in such a quiet location I was aware of the need for some background 'continuity' sound for when the skylarks were taking a break, and the Black Ridge Brook, complete with a choice of boulders I could use to shelter the recorders from the wind, was an obvious ad-hoc choice.

This is a pair of roughly concurrent recordings that I made on 20 April 2013, in a remote part of the northern section of Dartmoor, Devon, UK. In this presentation the recordings are placed end-to-end with fade-out and immediate fade-in, so it's clear that you've changed position at that point.

The skylark sound teasingly comes and goes, but the background burbling rumble from the stream is a constant, also with a quite stiff easterly breeze blowing.

As well as skylarks, the occasional distant meadow pipit can be heard, and a distant carrion crow.

Advisory
These are quiet, immensely peaceful soundscapes, so please go easy with the volume control!

This photo taken during the recording. The recorders were fairly widely separated, both just a bit off to the left of this view, each sheltered behind a fairly chunky boulder, and very close to the ground, so that the stream couldn't be heard directly, and only as this atmospheric gentle burbling rumble.

During this recording session: recorder R1 sheltered by an embedded boulder. All one can make out of it at that distance is the light-coloured speck -- its furry windshield about halfway between centre and full right.
The Black Ridge Brook is notionally visible at far left, but in reality all you can see is its rather winding bed, for along that stretch it's slightly sunken into the layer of peat. Hence its sounding so muffled in the recordings.

Techie stuff:
The recorders were Sony PCM-M10, both with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield, and they were both placed on Hama mini tripod, which meant they were only a very few inches above the ground.

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, and, much more recently, to apply 200% widening of stereo soundstage, using A1 Stereo Control, followed by an EQ tilt away from the treble (straight line from no change at 100Hz, to -7dB at 8kHz) to compensate for the treble boost resulting from the stereo widening.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thanks!