Birds and ambience in Taw valley on open Dartmoor

Peaceful springtime on open Dartmoor (Devon, UK), on lower flank of the Belstone Tors ridge, overlooking a copse in bottom of Taw valley. Distant birds (including occasional cuckoo calls), occasional sheep bleating, the constant distant sound of the River Taw tumbling over boulders in the stream bed — its sound strangely dispersed over the hillside beyond, thanks to a constant echo off all the boulders on that slope. The overall most prominent bird sounds a bit like a blackbird to the 'newbie' (that was me, at that time!), but is really a mistle thrush.

I made this recording on 26 May 2013, concurrently with another at roughly the same height but a very few minutes' walk in the upstream direction (approx. south), with an interesting difference of situation. You can hear it at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/699680/ .

Advisory

High-grade headphones are recommended in order to hear all the detail.

Earlier photo (18 May 2013) of recorder in same position as this time, and facing the same direction, towards the valley-bottom copse. Recorder is perched on a small boulder in about the middle of the bottom-left quarter of the photo (its light-grey furry windshield identifies it).

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with one furry windshield — a Røde DeadKitten (original, more effective, version) —, and placed on a Hama Mini tripod, which I regard as tiny rather than just mini!

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and more recent processing with the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin (160% widening).

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