Garden Bird Cacophony

Our garden appears to be quite untidy compared to our neighbours’ but it’s very much by design. My wife has planned it with wildlife in mind rather than traditional human aesthetics and, goodness me, it attracts a lot of birds at this time of year!

We intended to do the Big Garden Birdwatch today but it’s very stormy here in Newcastle upon Tyne as Storm Malik blows through, so we’re going to wait for calmer weather tomorrow.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a short recording I made on 2nd February 2021, a day when the birds arrived in their hundreds.

I was working away on my laptop at the time during the third lockdown.

“Open the front door!” my wife called down the stairs.

The sonic avian onslaught was something to behold. The weather was atrocious too but I couldn’t resist grabbing my shotgun microphone to make a quick mono recording of the cacophony for posterity:

A courier delivering a parcel shortly afterwards was spellbound by the sight and sound of so many species flitting about. It was great to see somebody else appreciating it too.

We love attracting so many creatures to our wild garden — wild and woolly’s the way to go if you’d like to do the same!

As always, good headphones or speakers recommended for full sonic enjoyment, particularly now that I’m uploading them to Bandcamp.

I’ve recently learned that SoundCloud (the audio streaming platform I’ve used until now) applies hefty compression to the files, which explains why they don’t have the quality of my original recordings.

Follow me on Bandcamp where I’m gradually republishing my favourites.

You can stream them free-of-charge. After a few plays, Bandcamp asks you to pay for further listens.

I’ve set it so that you can pay whatever you feel comfortable with from £1 — all contributions are hugely appreciated and will enable me to keep making new work.

Thanks for reading and listening!