Slowed flies, grasshoppers, and wind in bracken on Cranbrook Down (3 of 3)

Part 3 (of three) of a half-speed and somewhat amplified version (with slight cathedral reverb to add resonance) of an 80+ minutes original recording that I didn't upload here as I'd made it really for use in particular Nature-Symphonies. Halving the speed increased the length to over three hours, but because of the degree of interest throughout I considered it best to upload the whole thing (less a few small sections), but split into three to make it more accessible.

As with my previous upload here before this trio, the original is a refreshing natural soundscape on Cranbrook Down, high up above the Teign Gorge, with flies, though in this case much less in the way of bees and bumblebees, but with much more grasshopper activity, and no really significant aeroplane sound. The wind sound is virtually all not microphone wind noise, but the wind in the tall stands of bracken all around. However, the hissy component of that background wind-in-bracken sound also contains an often persistent and unwavering grasshopper sound, which seems to be from a different species from the foreground more varied and sporadic stridulations. Particular features of the three parts: 1. squealy bird calls (juvenile buzzard); 2. biggest emphasis on grasshoppers; 3. increasing background hum of very many flies in the bracken (rather difficult to discern through the background wind-in-bracken sound).

Again, here we have an interesting halfway house between the original natural soundscape and one of my Nature-Symphonies. I use no layering here, so we have simply the original natural soundscape, speed-reduced and so an octave lower in pitch. The reverb makes the low buzzes impressively resonant.

I made the original recording in middle part of day on 16 August 2024, beside the inner perimeter track of Cranbrook Castle (an ancient hill fort), on top of Cranbrook Down, high above (south of) Fingle Bridge (Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK). The exact spot was beside the east limb of the track, facing west, across it.

Arrow shows recording position; the recorder was facing to our left, across the track. A second recorder (black furry windshield) can be seen a little beyond. Parts of Drewsteignton village visible beyond, with the Teign Gorge nestling invisibly between here and there. Distant skyline is Exmoor.

Techie stuff:

Recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was placed on an Aoka carbon-fibre mini tripod (low, to minimize wind exposure). Unusually, I had the mics for all recordings in that session set to narrow (90°) angle (my default setting is wide-angle — 120°).

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and widened the soundstage back to about 120°, so giving a zoomed-in effect. For this version I reduced speed / pitch and added cathedral reverb (middling foreground) in Audacity, where I also raised the overall level by 6dB, so this isn't meant to sound much like the original. I used no noise reduction. Any attempt at the latter considerably reduced the grasshopper sound as well as making the flies sound more anaemic.

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