December wind through trees high up in Teign Gorge

Whereas the concurrent recording beside the line of tall beech trees on the hilltop just above captured an imposing and even rather monolithic primary sound, here we have a much more differentiated and varied sound, with a strongly three-dimensional quality.

There's a lot going on in this soundscape. We hear gusts rushing and almost roaring in the hilltop beech trees (to right and behind) before they come eddying down the slope here, causing a lot of rattling of dead leaves still on the twigs. In more quiescent periods you can hear gusts distantly moving around as they play their games down below in the valley and right over on the other side.

This is thus a soundscape of considerable contrasts:

1. the intimate, with very close play of wind, set against:
2. the elemental and impersonal — a breathtakingly expansive distant panorama of larger-scale wind actions.

This session was on 9 December 2019, with a moderate to fresh wind (force 4 to 5 Bft), and so the position for this recording, on the steep slope just below Hunting Gate, the highest point on the Hunter's Path, high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge (in the north-east outskirts of the Dartmoor National Park, Devon, UK), was reasonably sheltered for this purpose. Not only that, but the main wind gusts were coming obliquely over the nearby hilltop, making imposing rather thundering roars in the line of tall beech trees on the hilltop, which actually ends at Hunting Gate.

It's the same place where I'd made many of my wind chimes recordings, but positioned slightly lower down to get better shelter from the wind. This is in a very open copse of stunted trees that runs down the valley slope from there as though it were a continuation of the line of beech trees on top of the hill.

Additionally, three successive brief very light showers came across during this recording, and the pattering, especially on dead leaves, can be heard — though most of the time that is easily confused with concurrent rattling and rustling of dead leaves.

This is the earlier part of the full 2h 46' recording.

Hunter's Path and Hunting Gate, facing west, during this recording. The recorder is just this side of the gate, just a little down the steep slope.

This recording taking place (note the black furry windshield). The recorder is facing obliquely across / up the valley, but also is facing somewhat upwards to maximize the amount of detail and spaciousness of the captured soundscape.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was used on a lightweight Hama tripod set at near-minimum height (to minimize direct wind exposure).

Initial post-recording processing was to use Audacity to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, and the dynamic EQ VST plugin TDR Nova GE, via a custom profile, to tame microphone wind noise.

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