Hilarious guillemot bedlams in Pentargon Cove

Is it a coven of guillemots or a bedlam of stereotypical 'witches'? — Whichever, they're hilarious if you happen to be alone there in the gathering dark and know your birds, and aren't superstitious! Thankfully I ticked all the boxes but the last! — A wonderful spot to sit or lie back on the soft grass (avoiding some stinging ants and the odd adder) and to enjoy Mother Nature's sound and evident sense of humour.

On the evening of 20 June 2017, from this same location, I'd recorded wild guillemot bedlams — I think with more guillemots than heard this later time, primarily from a large cave on the opposite side of Pentargon Cove, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK — but on that occasion the sea sound was strong enough to weaken the impact of most of that in the recording, and just a minute or two before the dark-side-of-dusk half-hour ultra-hilarious spectacular 'macro-bedlam' unleashed (having me in repeated fits of giggles), the local katabatic wind had struck up and completely trashed that part of the recording. I was thus keen to capture a repeat of that tremendously entertaining and generally heart-warming spectacle.

The trouble was, of course, that on any clear and relatively calm night that katabatic wind would come on at some point, so a few attempts to capture a repeat performance all failed — quite apart from the guillemots themselves not performing anyway (i.e., on a usable 'bedlam' scale).

On this day, however, it was all upside-down. When I arrived at the site before midday the guillemots were already creating excellent, gloriously uncouth bedlams, albeit nothing like as frequently as on 20 June last year's session's 'purple half-hour' during dusk. This time razorbills were much more prominent in the commotions than on that previous occasion, and all this with a smaller swell and so a quieter sea.

— So I got recording straightaway in various positions to get different perspectives and degrees of shelter from the occasional slight (non-katabatic) breeze that picked up. I was intending to continue recording overnight, with the emphasis changing to Manx shearwaters for the darkest hours and then rearranging again to capture some nice dawn bird sounds.

In the event, at the late dusk period when last year the guillemots, and indeed the oystercatchers too, had gone absolutely bananas, this time they just progressively went silent! Also the night and dawn parts of this adventure were unable to happen, for later in the dusk period that confounded katabatic wind started developing again.

For a time I thought it wouldn't be strong enough to affect the recordings, but then as it came to time to rearrange for the Manx shearwaters session (past 11.0 p.m.), I myself was getting cold enough to doubt the wisdom of staying on any longer anyway — and a look at the level meters on the three recorders showed that the wind was significantly affecting them all. I thus made a reluctant but prudent choice to pack up and have an entertainingly difficult night-time hitch-hike back to Exeter.

Despite that early termination I'd come home with a total of over 22 hours of recording (on three recorders), and knew that some of that would have to be discarded.

The afternoon recordings especially are not just a potentially boring series of guillemot / razorbill bedlams, however. Other birds make their mark, some in the foreground, and make for a beautiful contrast and variety. In particular, occasional herring gulls flying about in the cove area enable you to hear the cove's reverberance, thanks to the cove being bounded by rugged cliffs on all landward sides — and on a few occasions a small flock of oystercatchers does a flyabout spectacular with their loud and bright piping calls.They give fascinating reverberation changes as they fly around.

Then in the foreground linnets are rarely out of earshot for long. They are quietly-voiced birds with voices of the utmost sweetness, musicality and sense of benignity, and serve as a touching foreground counter to the riotous earthy uncouthness of those seabird clowns in the cave where they're making almost all of their grotesque performance.

What I'm presenting here is a condensation from the afternoon's recording from the most effective position, atop a minor crest part-way down the quite steep grassy slope. To make this condensation I cut out or shortened many uneventful sections to make a CD-length end-product. Nothing has been overdubbed.

This recording taking place, on south end of Beeny Cliff, overlooking mouth of Pentargon Cove. The largest cave entrance is where I saw the main continual succession of guillemots flying in and out.

Notice (above) the vertical loop-shaped pale area on the column separating the two entrances of the big cave? — Now look closely at the broader top bit of that pale area, and then below at my 12 June 2021 HAND-HELD telephoto shot from the same position as that recorder, of part of that tiny bit, loaded with guillemots!

Yes, one of a series of test photos I took on 12 June 2021 from approximately the position of this recording. Does that mean that I'd at last upgraded to one of those hideously heavy cameras with big telephoto lens? — Nope, it was my diminutive new Panasonic DMC-TZ70 camera, which looks more like a toy rather than anything serious. Not on a tripod, but hand-held, just steadied a bit by my sitting on a slight hummock and resting my elbows on my knees (my legs drawn up) — and the shutter speed recorded was just a princely 1/125 second! For more about that, see my Blog post of 14 June 2021 about the new camera, which includes some comparison photos.

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

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields and correction for the D100's weakness in very low bass.

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