Skylarks beside Coast Path between Pentire Point and The Rumps, near Polzeath

Skylarks beside the coast path along the clifftop between Pentire Point and The Rumps, near Polzeath, Cornwall, UK, with fairly gentle sea breaking below (the horrendously laryngitic-sounding seabird down there being a great black-backed gull).

To quote from my hikes journal for this outing, on 9 July 2017…

"I wasn't expecting to do recording today, so took only one recorder. Also, from the start I was not intending to go beyond Port Isaac, because my peroneal and posterior tibial tendons were still recovering from a fair amount of stress gained on the last outing, quite apart from the warm and humid conditions.

"Between Pentire Point and the Rumps I was hearing such a strong skylark ensemble over the adjoining field that I spent 2 hours on a recording session there, with the recorder (R5) facing obliquely up into the field, with the sea quietly breaking on rocks steeply down below (left, behind). It was a rather stressful affair because really the path was too busy there for sensible recording sessions, and also a patchy drizzly shower caused me to have to stop the recording after just 7 minutes and put a polythene bag over the recorder, then resuming some 15 min later.

"Also, although it was somewhat sheltered there, for the most part there was still something like a force 2 breeze coming round for much of the time, so I was very unsure of getting anything worth keeping. And, adding to the barminess of having the session there, I had my lunch during the session, to save time. Of course that made it particularly difficult to guard the recording and shush approaching people.

"I doubt if I'd ever record there again, except perhaps for a dawn chorus — but then a night session there next year might be a very good thing to do. Anyway, as I moved on and thought about the session I reckoned that I might just get half-a-CD's worth out of the 1¾-hour's recording."

…And indeed, that's just what I did get from it after cutting out the pile of disturbances. And also, that night session the following year did happen, as my next upload demonstrates.

It's instructive to compare the sound quality of this recording with my previous upload here(https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/667500/ ). The M10 recordings for the most part, particularly when processed for stereo widening / sharpening, sound to be good or even 'great' recordings (at least, if you didn't hear the original soundscape). On the other hand the D100 ones of similar content have an uncanny way of sounding not like great recordings at all but more like the original soundscapes. In other words, the D100 is good enough to be pretty transparent for most of the time, and really draw the listener into the soundscape.

Photo taken on 22 May 2018, showing recorder location, with The Rumps in mid-distance on left

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two furry windshields (Windcut, custom), and it was placed on a Zipshot Mini tripod, which in my books is midi, rather than mini.

Post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields.

Please remember to give this recording a rating!