Dawn chorus in Branscombe Landslip — Highest grandstand panorama

Listening from on high, we eavesdrop on the unfolding dawn chorus, mostly more or less distant below, including a beautiful multi-blackbirds phase, with breathing-like distant sea sound beyond.

This was one of the fruits of my all-night recording session at Branscombe Landslip, Beer, Devon, UK, on the night of 30/31 May 2017. Wind had made worthwhile evening recording impossible, but, come late evening, the wind dropped right down, so at least I could start with a couple of concurrent recordings of the sea action during the night.

I put one recorder on the highest spot of the landslip from where I could overlook most of it, facing roughly westwards to the sea at Branscombe Mouth and beyond. Then, later in the small hours, I set it going with a very minor repositioning, to capture the whole dawn chorus below.

I had another recorder a little way almost directly below this recording's position, beside the Coast Path, where its sharp zigzag from the top position turns west on descent, with a narrow rather exposed unofficial track branching off to east from that bend, at the foot of a small bare cliff.

This spot too had strongly invited me previously, and indeed when I recorded the 'grandstand panorama' dawn chorus there last year, that had been a fall-back from my real wish to record from this slightly higher position with better panorama (but was too windy then). That dawn chorus recording is expected to be the next upload here; although it's the same 'performance', the perspective is different and there's the more noticeable sea action down below us on the left.

Looking back eastwards over Landslip, with arrow showing the exact recorder position (August 2007 photo)

 
Pre-sunrise panorama of Landslip, from close beside this recording's actual recording position, during a 2015 session. Recorder position to left and behind this position. Echoes and reverberation from the more distant sea action spread towards us on the towering chalk cliffs to right, making it sound as though the whole Landslip area is alive and gently breathing and indeed writhing.

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

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields.

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