Gentle sea near Land's End, with birds — great black-backed gull, chough, rock pipit

Gentle sea and birds from clifftop near Land's End, with the rather bizarre excruciatingly laryngitic-sounding calls of great black-backed gulls in a colony on Enys Dodnan, the island with the arch (louder and clearer than in the other concurrent recording), and aerobatics and zingy calls from a family group of choughs later on. Also the inevitable herring gulls at times, with rock pipits, occasional jackdaws. In contrast with the other concurrent recording, the sea here is heard directly, from the other side of Zawn Wells, with some nice minor impacts and splashdowns on the cliffs there, which lead to Pordenack Point. — A peaceful but also exhilarating sea panorama with 'different' and distinguished atmosphere!

I recorded this — the more southerly of two concurrent recordings — on 26 June 2013, just back from the clifftop overlooking the minor narrow inlet called Zawn Wells, near Land's End, Penwith, Cornwall, UK, on a hike from Cape Cornwall, on the rocky and rugged coast path to Gwennap Head, near Porthgwarra. To quote from my journal:

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Again the swell was small and not going to make exciting recordings. The choughs were more vocal at various points from Cot Valley towards Gwynver, but I didn't see obvious places to stop for a recording for those, and was aiming for a lunch-stop recording where I'd made the spectacular clifftop recordings 3 weeks ago overlooking Enys Dodnan etc.

In the event I had a surprise, because as I was coming towards passing by Enys Dodnan I heard extremely rapidly repeated chough calls just ahead, and found that it was 3 young choughs together among the grass & heather. I then backed off a bit and got out a recorder and used it hand-held using a Hama mini-tripod as a grip. After a very few minutes the three joined the parents, which were flying just below the clifftop, and they all went off in the Land's End direction.

I then placed that recorder on a prominent rock and set up the other recorder a bit further along, facing more towards the higher line of cliff leading to Pordenack Point, and then had my lunch stop. The choughs stayed away then, but it was clearly a great soundscape, with a lot of interest from great black-backed gulls on Enys Dodnan, and periodic jackdaws and quite a lot of rock pipit sound. And then, just as I was about to stop the first recording, I heard a distant chough in the Land's End direction, so held off — and, sure enough, the five of them came back and were flying around. So I extended the session for probably some 15 min before reluctantly packing up and moving on, with the choughs still having a whale of a time there.
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Advisory

Because of the processing to widen and sharpen the originally atrocious stereo imaging, the sea may sound rather phasey when listened to from certain speaker systems. Therefore high-grade headphones are by far the best solution.

Slightly earlier photo (6 June 2013) with much more boisterous sea, showing location of this session's two recordings here. The arrow points are almost on the recording spots. This recording was from the right-hand position, facing this way. Land's End is just beyond, off the photo.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective, version). It was set up on a Zipshot Mini tripod, which is what I'd regard as 'midi', standing on a little rock surface among the stunted heather growth.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield — and then more recently stereo widening / sharpening-up using the VST plugin A1 Stereo Control (160% widening).

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