Early spring afternoon birdsong by River Teign near Teign Gorge

What we could call a 'pre-celebration' of spring birdsong from surrounding woods and copses close to the River Teign just upstream from the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, with thinly spread mostly distant birdsong, including the odd more or less distant mistle thrush episodes. — A gentle joy to hear as we come out of winter and its deprivations!

On 13 March 2018 I wanted to make a birds recording similar to some previous ones I'd made, with the recorder pretty close to the River Teign but facing away from it. However, the stronger breeze on this occasion didn't allow that, so I had to think laterally. For this reason I finally put the recorder just a little up the hill slope, at the bottom edge of the copse there for shelter, and facing obliquely downstream and over the river, getting a great panorama of riverside copse and main Teign Gorge woodland edge (the latter to left).

This recording was one of those serendipitous gems that come my way on certain occasions where my primary aim for the particular recording session hasn't worked out. On this occasion my big aim was to get an extended bird chorus including a good showing of Mistle Thrush. It just happens that mistle thrushes have a way of teasing and playing frustrating games with me, and my recording session this time was a case in point.

I let the recorder run for some 2h50', hoping to catch a fair amount of mistle thrush song, as these had been singing quite a lot there in the morning, but in the event the recorder captured only a few brief episodes of that species, and what seemed to me to be mostly very sparse song from other birds. I doubted whether the recording would be worth keeping.

This, then, has turned out to be a wonderful serendipity, particularly as the wind had forced me to choose the aforementioned new spot for the recorder, which gave a breathtakingly spacious panorama, in which distant birds could often be heard in the various notionally quiet periods. The short mistle thrush episodes, including one right at the opening of the recording, seem all the more special for their scarcity.

— N.B. The mistle thrush sounds more like a blackbird than a song thrush, but sounds more hurried and seemingly anxious, with a smaller repertoire of easily recognisable phrases and a hurried rhythmic drive being emphasized by particular short bouncy phrases that keep reappearing. In addition to mistle thrush, birds include robin (on a few occasions mimicking blackcap), great tit, coal tit, raven, jackdaw, goldcrest, blackbird (song very distant and may not be noticed), blue tit, chaffinch, wood pigeon. The strange dry rattly bird calls that sound occasionally are of mistle thrush.

This recording taking place, the arrow pointing to the recorder's black furry windshield. The River Teign is coming from off to the right and behind, but is also hidden from view where it's notionally in sight, as it's somewhat sunken between its banks. The so-called Teign Gorge starts in the woods straight ahead.

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

Initial post-recording processing was to use Audacity to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, with 9dB bass cut to tame the mic wind noise. I didn't know about dynamic EQ software then, such as TDR Nova, which latter I was put onto and got using later that year. That would have got me distinctly better results — selectively EQ-ing the significant bass peaks rather than emasculating the whole recording.

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