Dawn chorus in Branscombe Landslip — Lower grandstand panorama

Listening from a slightly lower grandstand position, we eavesdrop on the unfolding dawn chorus, 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. That recording is at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/685176/ .

I had another recorder a little way almost directly below that 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 a 'grandstand panorama' dawn chorus there the previous 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).

This is the latter, lower recording. Although it's the same 'performance', the perspective is different here, and much closer, but with a lot of depth, and there's more noticeable sea action down below us on the left.

A dummy run recording at the same spot the previous evening, when it was too windy to get anything useful. The little notice placed on the ground under the recorder informs passers-by that a recording is in progress, and asks for them to pass by quietly and quickly.

Pre-sunrise panorama of Landslip, from position above the actual recording position during a 2015 session, a small cliff face separating the upper and lower positions. Recorder position to left and behind / below 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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