Peaceful miniature dawn chorus with a difference, above Pentargon Cove

If a typical dawn chorus is like a large symphony orchestra, this one is a minimalist chamber ensemble version — in a peaceful position with backdrop of a gentle sea in the mouth of Pentargon Cove way below, and its repertoire of occasional oystercatcher flyabouts and outbreaks of hilarious guillemot bedlam in a megaphone-like cave.

We listen from pre-dawn onwards, so as to hear the first tentative twitterings. In our relatively foreground 'chamber ensemble' of a dawn chorus, birds we hear (mostly more or less distant) include stonechat, blackbird, linnet, and eventually most persistently, stonechat.

On 21 May 2019 I hitch-hiked to Boscastle (Cornwall, UK), and walked on the somewhat challenging coast path to the headland that forms the northern 'lip' of the mouth of the rugged and quite spectacular Pentargon Cove, eventually to hitch-hike back to my Exeter abode the following morning. To quote from my journal:

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I had considerable doubts as to whether this would work out significantly. I was seeking to repeat the hilarious guillemots spectacular I recorded on the evening of June 2017, where the wind had forced me to delete the final (crazy-best!) half-hour. This time, with very light wind forecast and no significant swell and just modest superficial waves, I thought I might be in with a chance, apart from the ongoing issue of katabatic wind tendency. I took R4, R5 and R6, so, together with requisite tripods, this helped make for a load that aggravated my rather poor balance and made the walking rather difficult. …

… At Beeny Cliff (S. end), some modest guillemot bedlams were occurring, but it wasn't worth recording then because of both the gentle breeze blowing up the grassy slope, and constant noise from a couple of presumably fishing boats a little way out at sea. At least I took some rest there. Then I returned to Boscastle to seek early evening meal. … [I was] back at Beeny Cliff south end at 7.05.

I set up R5 near bottom of minor crest well down on grassy slope of headland — this time with mic angle set at 90° as an experiment. I had R6 higher up, somewhat sheltered by uppermost crag of main prominence of that headland, and R4 at a new position, overlooking Pentargon Cove from a slight grassy ledge on steep craggy spur forming the clifftop on this side of Pentargon Cove; this view had more coverage of the upper reaches of the cove.

For dawn recordings I had R6 fairly high up on the alternative Beeny Cliff track, which avoids the very steep loose section at Fire Beacon Point, and facing towards the guillemots' cave, so it could get any dawn chorus immediately around, with the seabirds as a background. R5 I put in the same position as R4 in the evening, so to left it was covering a stretch of the cove that is hidden round the corner from recorders placed on my previous positions on the grassy slope. I couldn't think of anywhere useful to put R4, in view of it being widely a bit too breezy, so didn't use it during the dawn session.

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Advisory
This is a pretty quiet soundscape, so I recommend going easy on that volume control; see below how far away the audible sea 'action' was.

Later photo (26 August same year), from position of recorder for this recording, and facing the same way, over mouth of rather distant Pentargon Cove. The darkest bit of the facing cliff (just left of centre) is actually a large cave, and it's from there that we hear the most prominent guillemot sounds, because that cave acts like a megaphone.

Later photo (26 August same year), looking back to the recorder position (arrow marks the spot).

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with three nested custom Windcut furry windshields, placed on a standard-size Zipshot tripod.

The choice to use a third furry was because of the wind. As I was only a little later on to recognise, use of that third furry is really something to avoid if at all possible because of the large increase in level of self-noise caused by the strength of the EQ to compensate for the muffling effect of the furries.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields, and dynamic EQ applied in TDR Nova to tame the mic wind noise..

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