June night thunderstorm, rain and dawn blackbirds

A full, relatively 'polite', thunderstorm, apparently with only in-cloud lightning in this area, from first almost inaudible murmurs to last dying mutterings, with blackbirds beginning to sing as dawn begins to creep up on us. Seagulls (herring gull) also sound out a bit, and we also hear the begging calls from the gulls' chicks — particularly from a nest on a domestic chimney pot just across the road.

Thunderstorms are quite a rarity in Exeter (Devon, UK), so for me each such storm is a very special event.

This recording session, on the night of 6–7 June 2014, marked the start of my ongoing sensibly-based practice of running a recorder on my city-centre bedroom window sill all night whenever there looked to be reasonable likelihood of thunderstorms being in the area sometime then, and there were no significant contra-indications for my doing so, such as significant wind blowing from this side of my abode (to blow rain in or give excessive mic wind noise), or it being too cold for me to want to have an open window at all. That way I could capture storms in their entirety, even though normally I'd wake up part-way through the approach of a storm.

This storm was entirely during the small hours of 7 June, and lasted significantly longer than in this edited version of the recording. Not only did I have the odd city sounds to cut out, but as the storm got anything like close, the lightning frequency dropped and became only occasional. So, in order to get a really satisfactory experience from the recording, I took the liberty of shortening the interval between lightnings by half to two-thirds until the rain and then our little friends the blackbirds gained the main focus of attention.

Advisory:
To hear this to best effect you need high-grade headphones, and to
have the volume setting about 9dB above a sensible normal level for a realistic rendition of symphonic orchestral music. To clarify, you need the volume set so that, in the opening, the background sound, with almost inaudible thunder murmurs, is clearly, but only just, audible — hoping that makes sense!

Thundery sky at sunrise time, on 10 October 2013, as part of the view from my bedroom window, from where I made this recording

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective version), and it was placed on a Hama Mini tripod (very small) raised up on some books (BAD idea, as I was later to find out the hard way!!).

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, and to compensate for 'alcove resonance' in the bass, and much more recently it's had stereo widening / sharpening processing to 200% width with A1 Stereo Control VST plugin, then a 7dB EQ tilt away from the treble (straight line from no change at 100Hz to -7dB at 8K) to compensate for the treble overemphasis caused by the stereo widening.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!