This lively dawn chorus was recorded in a small pothole coulee in Eastern Washington, one of the numerous Seep Lakes of the Channeled Scablands.
There’s a lot to unpack here…
Category Archives: Field Recording
Long Swamp Dawn, 2019-07-17
This is my last Long Swamp post. I promise. My last Long Swamp post from 2019-07.
As I mentioned in last night’s Dusk post, I’ve fallen in love with the mountains of the Okanogan. The wet meadows, swampy bogs, dense forests, deep riparian zones, grassy ridge tops, and more are perfect for finding sonically rich, naturally quiet locations. Most of the special places are difficult to reach from Seattle, but that’s fine by me. It means more opportunities to record with without interruption.
Long Swamp Dusk, 2019-07-16
Okay, it’s true. I’ve fallen in love with the Okanogan mountains, with the wet meadows, swampy bogs, dense forests, grassy ridge tops, and more. Most of the naturally quiet locations are a little difficult to reach from Seattle, but that’s fine by me. It just means more opportunities to record with without interruption.
On the night of 2019-07-17 I camped, once again, near Long Swamp. I’d spent the previous night and Dawn at the Long Swamp Campground (https://soundcloud.com/soundeziner/long-swamp-dawn), but this night I found a location further up the drainage with more open water.
Long Swamp
Just a few miles away and a little farther up the mountains from Thirtymile Meadows can be found Long Swamp, a very large, highly biodiverse wetland complex.
Like the wet meadows, swamps in this area form through the collection of meltwater of the preceding winter. Unlike the shallow bowls of the meadows, though, the swamps form in the shallow creased valleys between rising prominences. Sometimes the water drains away into a creek at the end of the of the valley, but they are just as likely to simply seep slowly into the topsoil to re-appear elsewhere as a natural spring. Long Swamp does both.
Thirtymile Dawn
Thirtymile Meadows is a wet, subalpine meadow high in the Okanogan National Forest. A natural shallow bowl, it collects meltwater from each winter and slowly drains away through innumerable soft tinkling streams. In such a wide open space it can be difficult to know where to point microphones. When I visited in the Summer of 2019 I was never certain where the next morning’s dawn chorus would arrive from. Past migrant season there was no consistent resting place for the wildlife every night.
Filled with chipmunks, Hermit Thrushes, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Lincoln’s Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, Woodpeckers, Ravens, Clark’s Nutcrackers, American Robins, and more, the meadow is a feast for the eyes and ears of the quiet observer.
Isolation
Right now we’re all feeling fairly isolated, pretty much all across the world. It’s a remarkable time in world history. I was reminded that at this time last year I heading out for a trip…
A little Ear Candy
Hey all! I’ve been busy working on the next couple of releases. In the meantime, I thought I’d offer a little something for y’all to listen to.
I feel fortunate to have been able to record over an hour of unbroken natural sound in the Olympic National Forest at the Snider-Jackson trail head. Starting during Civil Twilight, sun rises in this recording around the 30 minute mark, although the Thrushes were awake and active long before then. Robins, Varied Thrushes, Flycatchers, woodpeckers, squirrels, Pacific Wrens, and more fill these moss-covered woods to the background wash of the Calawah River.
Talkeetna, AK, May 31-2, 2017
A NWS Sidetrip: Talkeetna, AK, May 31-2, 2017
This didn’t set out as a Northwest Soundscapes Project trip. I joined my wife in Anchorage for a few days at the start of a summer camp she was helping with and was offered the chance by the camp director to borrow a yurt in Talkeetna for a few days, most likely that I wouldn’t be underfoot for the rest of the camp. Actually just outside of Talkeetna, and a couple miles into the boreal taiga, the yurt was a short hike from Long Lake, a beautiful clear lake that I spent two happy days canoeing on, bringing along my recorder & microphones. Continue reading Talkeetna, AK, May 31-2, 2017
Sinlahekin Valley, May 20-22, 2017
NWS10: Sinlahekin Valley, May 20-22, 2017
Sinlahekin Valley is the heart of the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area, a large unit managed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. A mixture of ranch land, managed big-game area, protected wildlife refuge, and dedicated recreation area, Sinlahekin is a beautiful, bio-diverse and extremely habitat diverse region protected from human over-run more from remoteness than anything else.
Colockum Wildlife Area, July 05-09, 2016
Infrequent Updates
Okay, we’re now at mid-March, 2017. A year ago this month we were in the midst of Kickstartingthis project. How have we done? What are the hits and misses, successes and failures we’ve had along the way?
NWS03: Colockum Wildlife Area, July 05-09, 2016
I hadn’t originally intended to stop in the Colockum Wildlife Area. In fact, it was a last minute decision made at a pit stop for gas. My original destination had been the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge before continuing on to pick up my daughter from a camp in Central Oregon. I’m glad I stopped and made the decision to stay instead of continuing as it turns out the main accessible areas of Toppenish are flooded with anthropogenic noise, mainly from the the busy highway that connects to the main entrance. While it would have helped illustrate the problems with the invasion of human-caused noise pollution, it would have been a miserable and likely wasted trip.
Continue reading Colockum Wildlife Area, July 05-09, 2016