Seabird colonies on Short Island, near Ladies' Window, near Boscastle

A rather subterranean-sounding sea, and calls from the seabird colonies on Short Island, which we're fairly closely overlooking. — Herring gull, of course, plus comical outbursts from guillemots, with razorbills joining in. High-pitched squealings are the begging calls of gull chicks on the island, while nearer at hand the occasional carrion crow or group of linnets passes by. The quite frequent fast flapping sounds on the sea surface are caused by guillemots flying that close to the surface.

I recorded this on 25 June 2013 on the craggy NNW spur of the Ladies' Window headland of Firebeacon Hill, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK. It was an unexpected little extra, as I'd come out to record some sets of small wind chimes on suitable clifftops — indeed without worthwhile results apart from just one recording, thanks to a variety of factors. Although rather short, this little 'extra' turned out to be the day's recording that pleased me most.

The Ladies' Window itself is of no consequence for my recordings, but it's a spectacular and much-photographed clifftop natural arch. It doesn't show in the first photo below, where it is actually sort-of visible, because we're looking across it, not through it.

One thing that made this recording sound so engaging was virtually all sea action on cliff base or rocks was out of sight, so that what we hear of it is heard indirectly and is thus strongly muffled. Its sound here, then, has a certain dark and soft quality. The lack of the normal hissiness of the sea sound enables us to hear a lot of distant bird sounds that would normally have been drowned out by the sea sound.

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 the best solution.

Later photo (23 June 2021), showing Short Island (left) and positions of recorder (left arrow) and Ladies' Window (right arrow).

This recording taking place — telephoto view from just above Ladies' Window, with top of Short Island showing beyond this craggy exposed spur, and recorder visible on the spur's crest to right.

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 I regard as 'midi' rather than 'mini'.

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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