Tadpoles sound like sausages

Last weekend I had a fantastic time at the Kindrogan Field Studies Centre on their first ‘Wildlife Sound Recording’ course. We were under the learned and expert instruction of Roger Boughton and Phil Riddett who are both part of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Doing the course was justified as work for a new play, that I shall describe in a later post, but also justified as being a brilliant laugh. Roger and Phil are not only great tutors but hilarious and full of a million stories about travels to mudflats and forests around the world.

The Kindrogan Centre is also a great place to stay and work. It’s surrounded by beautiful country that is teeming with wildlife. I’d thoroughly recommend it for any of their courses as well as a damn fine breakfast.

So, we spent the weekend waving around microphones, scaring the fauna and the occasional flora. Roger and Phil generously gave us the chance to play with some great, and incredibly expensive, kit. There were many occasions throughout the weekend that I felt like a little boy, in total wonder at the sounds coming through the headphones, scooped out of the air by a parabolic reflector and a sensitive microphone.This is one of my first recordings, made around 5am or so. I was recording some birdsong when I had three unexpected visitors:

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It must be twenty years or more since I’ve seen red squirrels in the wild and the woods around Kindrogan are full of them. These three were belting around the trees and undergrowth oblivious to everything around them. They were fast and furious little red streaks of energy. And the microphone was picking up tiny squeaks and the scratching of their tiny feet on the bark. I can’t describe how exciting it was to watch and hear. This is more of them:

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And this, so I was informed later, is the distress call of a Mistle Thrush. A Sparrow Hawk had just flown over so maybe that was the cause of the distress:

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Later in the weekend I recorded the river that flows beside the centre. I like the bassey bloppy noises under the splashing. You might have to listen with some headphones to hear them. The river was flowing pretty fast:

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On the Sunday we had a demonstration of the a hydrophone (underwater microphone) which was hilarious. A pond nearby was teeming with tadpoles and we all took turns to listen to them make a sound that was very similar to frying sausages. I suspect it was actually the sound of lots of little tadpoles headbutting the microphone. Maybe someone from the course will read this and send me a copy of the recording so I can post it (pretty pleeeeease).

And I’ll finish with a quick plug for Phil. One of his recordings is on a British Library CD – order it now! To say it is a recording of a nightingale barely describes this beautiful, multi-layered and musical recording of woodland. I ordered it the day I got back, it arrived the next morning and I’ve been playing it very loud ever since, confusing cats for miles around. I’m sure Roger has some recordings out there of equal quality but I haven’t got any locations for them yet.

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P.S. Roger has now kindly sent a copy of the tadpole recording – Tadpoles!!