108 Song thrush sings in twilight gales

Full Episode description

We were told a song thrush lives up in the wood. The old place on the side of an exposed and remote hill, where sheep are kept in a paddock under the shelter of trees. Tall firs, holly trees, hawthorn and a tangle of thorny briars. For a moment, the pure repeated notes of that ethereal bird, that musical songster of echoing forests, rang out somewhere in our imaginations. Another gale was forecast though, and to try for a recording we’d have to hurry. Our mic box, tattered after months of outdoor use, needed new wind baffles.

We quickly cut and pinned fresh squares of fluffy acoustically transparent fabric onto the box. Drawing pins proved the best. Sat at the kitchen table, on one side the wall clock ticked.  On the other, flurries of hail rattled against the windows. Real weather was coming. In an hour we were out. 

Striding up the moor, along its steep stony lane, sleet rained down in freezing waves. It made the widely spaced bars of the cattle grids even more treacherous than usual. The high grassland was waterlogged. Through deep puddled trenches and along the rough track we went. The sky stripes of bright, and grey. Then we reached it, perched on the sloping moor, the dignified shelter of the old wood. The deep hushing space of the wood. The wood where the song thrush lives.
 
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We made this recording last week on the flanks of Black Hill in Derbyshire. This segment is from twilight to dark. The mic box was attached to an ancient holly tree covered in a stocking of moss, facing out over the paddock towards banks of tall fir trees. The song thrush did sing as did a robin, which for a short time perches directly above the kit. Sheep briefly baa too. This sound photograph captures the scene, a panoramic movement of fir and holly trees as they absorb the energy of the oncoming gale.