Rookery sound recordings
hello, it was very nice to find this site, I’ve found the previous posts interesting and I hope someone here might be able to help me. I am hoping to obtain a field recording of a rookery, ideally a long recording (approx 20 minutes or more) of a rookery with lots of birds. So…questions. Does anyone have any recordings they would be willing to share? Does anyone know of any in the public domain anywhere or existing on record/tape/cd? The other solution to this is that I have the means to record outdoors myself, so alternatively does anyone know of any large rookeries in Southern Scotland/Northern England? Following on from that, is there any insights into rook behaviour that might help me. The smallish rookery nearby to me was looking/sounding empty when I went to visit it earlier this year but going past today (early March) there was a good few birds in the trees, so is there an ideal time of year and time of day that I would find the most birds present? Finally (phew..!) is there anything I should consider in trying to get fairly near to the nests to record, e.g. how near I can get without disturbing the birds.
Any ideas on the above would be very gratefully recieved, thank you.
sam
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hi there and welcome to rooks.org.uk
The rooks are busy patching up their nests and mating right now, so there will be loads of activity around the rookeries.
I could make such a recording for you. Twenty mins would be no problem. Would it be OK for there to be vehicle noise as well, or would you prefer a more rural recording?
My email is crowcity@gmail.com if you want to contact me directly :>
April 9th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Thank you!
Yes the rookery has become much busier and I managed to get some recordings done. It also made me get out of bed before dawn and watching groups of rooks leaving and arriving the trees through the early mist was an amazing, wonderful sight. So I was very glad that the idea of recording rooks led me to experience that! The recordings I got were good but there was also blackbirds and pigeons in the wood, although I have nothing against them, their calls were picked up by the mic better than the rooks, so that was a slight dissapointment.
Thank you very much for your offer to make a recording. I am still planning to do more and might involve them in sound peices later, if you still would like to record your rooks I would greatly welcome their addition. I am in the middle of moving house right now but will contact you via email later.
Best wishes. Sam
April 27th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Glad it was such a positive experience! I’ll go and record some rooks for a similar reason - simply to get out there and amongst the rookeries! Most rookeries around here, the ones on public land anyway, are close to roads, but I’ll try to get one with as little road noise as possible ;>