Willow warblers and flies on Cranbrook Down

Peaceful hot summer morning natural soundscape on Cranbrook Down, high up above the Teign Gorge, with willow warblers and flies, with some distant clanking from some farm machinery. We also occasionally hear contact calls of a group of linnets, and somewhere in the recording is a linnet song fragment. Also a distant yellowhammer. There is also the odd distant grasshopper, which for many listeners would pass unnoticed.

I made this recording on morning of 31 July 2024, on the open ground on the uppermost part of Cranbrook Down, high above (south of) Fingle Bridge (Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK), early-on in the final ascent from the woods to the summit area (the Cranbrook Castle ancient hill fort).

I was really recording for the flies and bees, for making a new Nature-Symphony. However, when I tried to do the latter I found that the willow warblers came out as a rather unedifying jumble when subjected to offset layering, and also the farm noises, although unobtrusive in this recording per se, when piled up in the offset layering, became very obtrusive, so I chose to abandon thoughts of making a Nature-Symphony of this — but after that I decided to try again with the layers much more offset, and that is now at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/750616/ .

After that my next several uploads, will be Nature-Symphonies I've made from another Cranbrook Down flies recording.

This recording taking place.

Techie stuff:

Recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was placed on a Sirui carbon-fibre tripod.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!