Nick Greaves, Resident Falconer at the Betton Bird of Prey Centre at East Ayton, near Scarborough, recently entertained a party of audio recordists from the British Sound Recording Association.
I’ve always been in awe of birds of prey – they’re so large, imperious and independent-looking. They sometimes remind me of the Duke of Edinburgh – but don’t tell him.
Much of this recording of a peregrine was made on an open hillside and a competition judge criticised it for the sound of the wind. But what else do you get, on a windy hillside? In any case I felt it was an important part of the experience of ‘being there’, one of my constant aims in open air situations.
If you can bring yourself to ignore the wind listen out for the doppler effect of the jesses (bells attached to the hawk’s legs) as it swooped down within 18″ of our heads. Rather proud of that.
Mike Dickins.
I really enjoyed this, thank you very much for making it available. I definitely agree with you about the doppler effect that the bells make; they really helped to give a strong impression of the speed of the hawk. Thanks again – looking forward to hearing more!
Thanks very much for sharing this. Personally speaking, I would call the peregrine falcon as my bird of prey du jour, but I think that might be an age thing. Looking forward to hearing plenty more from the Mike Dickins archive!
Great recording, thanks for sharing it. Can you tell me what you used/how you recorded it? Cheers!
Thanks for your encouraging response. The eqpt I used was a Marantz PMD660 with a Beyer MCE 82 mike completely enclosed in a Rycote windshield and muff. (That’s why I was so put out about the wind criticism. I edit on a very old version of Soundscape, which will not run on anything later than Windows 98.
The practical problems I had (apart from the wind) was the hillside situation on which we were working. From where we were the hill sloped up and the falconer was therefore a little higher than we were. The traffic noise was also a bother because the road was above and behind the falconer so that I couldn’t avoid it, as it was in the line of sight for recording the speaker. I didn’t catch on at the time, but it would have been better if HE had been below us and WE above him; that way the traffic noise would have been greatly reduced (ie our backs would have been towards the unwanted sound of the traffic).
Nonetheless it was an exhilarating recording challenge for me, quite apart from the wonder at seeing the hawk do its stuff.
Ed sends his best wishes to you, by the way.
Mike
Hi Mike,
I see you use a PMD660, we use them at work and they are a wonderful piece of kit. We used to use PMD650s then went solid state with a PMD670 then it was a joy when they released the 660!
The only problems we’ve discovered is that the entire Marantz range has a tendency to freeze and lock up and a fairly regular basis, have you noticed this on your 660? Also why didn’t they integrate a battery charger into the 660, madness?!?
If you ever consider something even smaller we’ve been very happy with the PMD620 although you of course lose some of the functionality of it’s bigger brothers.
Keep up the recording!
Andy.
Thanks for your response, Andy. I haven’t ever experienced the freezing you mention; I’ve been using the 660 for 2 – 3 years now and it has been a dream.
In fact I’ve always had good service from Marantz. When I first began recording money was tight and all I could afford was a Philips N2206 (£18 guineas) and it had aa built-in electret mike which was best at recording the sound of the recorder working. Optimistically, it was called a Hipster.
My first Marantz was the size and weight of a house brick – I forget the number – but I eventually had a sequence of CP 230s and 240s. Several years with minidisc equipment and now the 660 which, as you say, is delightful. You say you use one at work; what do you do?
Mike