Noisy Corkscrew Swamp
Back in late December of 2008 I was down in Naples, Florida for a short trip and decided to check out Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. It is a remarkably beautiful place that features an old growth cypress forest that barely lets light pass through it. It also has a boardwalk that takes you through a healthy chunk of the swamp to areas that are normally be hard to get to. I saw herons, hawks, thrushes, and even a raccoon. I’m not talking about the kind of raccoon that eats your trash, but a real raccoon that is not fat on Whoppers from Burger King. The raccoon was svelte and pounced on a fish like a cheetah. I wish I had pictures, but the raccoon was super fast and I also forgot my camera.
So you get the idea - Corkscrew Swamp is pretty damn cool. All except for one thing: noise! All those birds and critters make great sounds, but you can’t hear them that well when planes are constantly flying over head and heavy traffic is always driving by. Apparently, it didn’t used to be like this, but when Naples became a prime retirement location, air traffic increased and the surrounding roads were widened to accommodate more traffic. I wish I had the opportunity to record there 15 years ago.
I am currently in the process of sifting through the recordings from that day to try and find some clean material and I’m not having a tremendous amount of luck. It is one of those places where you have to record for weeks to get just a few hours of usable material.
This is a short clip of some cool birdies with some not so cool traffic overlapping the recording. Of all of the material I have sifted through this has the least offensive intrusion of human sound.
Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of Schoeps CMC5 setup for MS, with the MK4 as the mid. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96.
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February 9th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Very clear. What microphone / recorder combination are you using??
February 10th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Thanks John. I mean to put that in the post originally. I just updated it.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:24 am
My cat really likes this. he’s looking around wondering how the hell these birds got in my apartment. super clean recording.
February 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Cool hobby/job you have. If you ever get the sound of a small partially frozen stream burbling along beneath, through, and above the ice, let me know. One of my favorite sounds.
February 12th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
You know a good place to record such a sound?
February 17th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I heard it in the Kinnickinnic State Park last, out in WI south or River Falls. It was freaking beautiful …
Also been in two caves with lots of rock formation activity that sounded amazing, hmm and I guess that was again due to subtle mulitsource water sounds that overlapped and interplayed – and in the caves, also echoed … see the very end of the page I linked – the sounds clearly made a big impression on me to get me gushing such while in the midst of my punk rock years … heh..
February 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] Still, Raphael has managed to locate some relatively unsullied aural gems, including several minutes of birdsong and general ambience (MP3). More on this specific recording at sepulchra.com. [...]