This bird has a very distinctive voice but I would need my bird expert, Martin Humphreys, to identify it for me.
I thought I was getting better at bird identification from their songs but it seems there doesn’t need to be much of a gap in practice for the knowledge gained to all go out the window.
This post is pretty much just what it says on the tin!
Using the excellent RODE recording app for iPhone (though not their iPhone mic) I got, precisely, the sound of the wind in the marsh grass when out walking in the evening recently. I held the iPhone right in amongst the grasses which had the added advantage of muffling the sound of traffic on the motorway as well as stopping the rumble effect of the wind directly on the mic.
These field recordings on their own are not going to be for everyone but I enjoyed listening to the changing sounds of the grasses as the wind strength changed and find, as with the recording I do for StillWalks videos, that the sound does so much to help visualize the memory.
Swansea may be the wettest city in the UK, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth visiting.
It may be that you can find scenes similar to this in many different places around the world but as with any image (or sound), each one is, in fact, unique to the time and place according to the conditions at the time the photograph is taken or the sound recorded.
Understanding that what we experience of our surroundings is interdependent on these unique conditions from moment to moment is a major part of what StillWalks is about.
More important than that, however, is simply the enjoyment of what we see and hear around us – rain it may be, but I hope you enjoy these images.
These were the first shorts I took during my late evening walk down on the marshes. I enjoyed the walk and doing the photography – say no more 🙂
I wasn’t the only one out for a late evening stroll on the marshes last weekend.
You can click the images to enlarge but if you could zoom in on the originals, you would see just how grainy they are from the high ISO.
First shot – ISO3200, f4.5, 1/30. Second shot – ISO3200, f5, 1/30
Horns in the Night
Bull’s Eye
Going Home
A late evening walk down on the marshes (last weekend before the rain returned) revealed some colour through the dim light after sunset in the form of an Iris or Flag, whichever you like to call them.
The light really was fading a lot by the time I took these photos which required full manual mode on the camera as any automation tried to over-compensate for the lack of light.
A high ISO of 3200 was needed, f11 at 1/60 for the first shot and ISO3200, f7.1, 1/25 for the second. A good job my Canon EF70-300 lens has image stabilisation.
These images are from the StillWalk “Flora and Fauna Walk” which is another walk from Galloway in South West Scotland. These are obviously three examples of the fauna.
In fact there is more than just birds and butterflies in the video but I wasn’t able to photograph some of the fauna we have seen there such as the deer on the beach or the red squirrel in the woods or the fox cubs playing on the beach in the moonlight at 3 AM . . . or the rabbits or stoats or voles . . . .
Butterfly – Painted Lady
Oystercatcher
Blackbird
Sam is blind, has only three legs and diabetes but on a hot day in this beautiful secret (see yesterdays post) woodland, he enjoyed his swim and was determined to get the sticks thrown for him.
Click the image or play buttons to view the videos.
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