Birds and ambience in Taw valley on open Dartmoor (2)

Peaceful springtime on open Dartmoor (Devon, UK), on lower flank of the Belstone Tors ridge, overlooking the bottom of Taw valley to the slopes of Cosdon Hill, with Wild Tor on skyline to right. 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 most prominent bird overall 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 downstream direction (approx. north). You can hear that one at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/699679/ .

This one has an interesting difference of situation. Whereas that one is on a very open and relatively uniform slope, this one is among larger boulders at the foot of a patch of very bouldery steeper slope, which is behind the recorder. In acoustic terms that's quite a big deal, because here the distant sounds all seem closer and more 'present', so this soundscape gains in 'presence' and clarity of everything, but loses a little of the almost other-worldly spaciousness and vastness of the other recording.

Advisory

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

This recording taking place.

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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