For about a week I have had a family of Great Tits visiting several times each day. As far as I can tell there are two adults and four youngsters.
A bit of video from the bird table:
There are a few problems with my sound recording. It only seems to happen when there are noisy House Sparrows about. For some reason their chirps seem to distort.
I wonder if they are the nest box GTs. I once went to watch proper film makers at work the sound recordess had lots of microphone covers and reflectors. The covers varied from big hairy things to what I can only describe as a condom. I suspected it was but didn't like to enquire. Apparently they are best for damping wind noise. Don't know how they'd cope with Sparrows though.
ReplyDeleteAdrian: I don't think they are from my nest box. I am sure only three chicks survived.
DeleteI have a small fluffy cover on the external mic on the 70D
The really fluffy one is commonly know as a deadcat.
The problem I have sounds like harmonic distortion to me. There may be more to a Sparrows sound than we can hear.
To find out you would have to use a directional mic and zoom in on just one Sparrow. I don't do sound editing if it involves anything more than levels and fade. It is a discipline on it's own. I once met a man hiding in bushes with more gear than you could shake a stick at. I met him in the pub a couple of days later and his hobby was recording bird noises, foxes and badgers. He ws still recording on reel to reel. An interesting chap.
DeleteAdrian: I think I've sussed the problem. It seems to be the way the gizmo I use to grab video / sound can't handle very loud sounds or distorts above certain high frequencies. I do have another way to get the sound into the MacBook though it involves and extra bit of kit to use the thunderbolt input. Trouble is it stops the Mac's own speaker from monitoring. A bit more tinkering to do but it seems like the sound is much purer that way. From what I've read those specialist portable reel to reel jobbies are excellent, and so they should be at the price!
Deletethe sound is interesting! just picking on the sparrows...
ReplyDeleteInteresting but not real TWG.
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